February 26, 2018

While Hitler earmarked a particular ethnic group as well as the mentally defective for removal from the planet, the Republican or conservative philosophy lets people self select for removal. That's what the opioid crisis is all about. Republicans are followers of Ayn Rand and Herman Spencer. It's 'survival of the fittest' and devil take the hindermost. As Nixon stated, people should be treated with 'benign neglect.' Hitler treated then with 'malign neglect.' Republicans are equal opportunity employers. They go along with self selected removal from the planet without regard to religion, race, ethnic group or national origin.

As Neitsche and Ayn Rand believed, there would be the 'emergence of the superman.' That was what society should be all about according to them. We have seen the emergence of a superman class lately: billionaires. The economic divide grows greater on a daily basis. The homeless are treated with benign neglect until public health issues force society to do something because unsanitary conditions are impacting the rest of us.

The philosophy of a 'preferential option for the poor' has totally gone by the way side as a 'survival of the fittest' philosophy has become mainstream. Christ's teaching of 'blessed are the meek' has been replaced with 'blessed are the powerful and successful.' Christianity has morphed so that having wealth is an indication of God's favor. Being poor is an indication of lack of moral fiber. The rich, the smart, the beautiful, the ambitious are to be encouraged. Those having merit are to be encouraged. Those lacking merit - the low IQ, the ugly, the weak - are encouraged to self select to leave the planet. Republicans will help them along by encouraging corporations to manufacture the means for their own self removal.

In Germany corporations manufactured the gas that killed people in gas chambers. Here corporations manufacture opioids that are freely available for those who want to remove themselves from the planet. There is only limited space on the planet so the human race will only improve itself if the meritorious survive while those lacking merit self select for removal. Again self selection for removal is open to all on an equal basis without regard to race, religion, ethinic group or national origin.

January 22, 2018

America has never had a president as deeply unpopular at this stage of his presidency, or one who has sucked up more political oxygen. This isn’t good news for the Republican Party this November or in the future, because the GOP has sold its soul to Trump.

Three principles once gave the GOP its identity and mission: Shrink the deficit, defend states’ rights, and be tough on Russia.

Now, after a year with the raving man-child who now occupies the White House, the Republican Party has taken a giant U-turn. Budget deficits are dandy, state’s rights are obsolete, and Russian aggression is no big deal.

By embracing a man whose only principles are winning and getting even, the Republican Party no longer stands for anything other than Trump.

Start with fiscal responsibility.

When George W. Bush took office in 2001, the Congressional Budget Office projected a $5.6 trillion budget surplus over 10 years. Yet even this propitious outlook didn’t stop several Republicans from arguing against the Bush tax cut out of concern it would increase the nation’s debt.

A few years later, congressional Republicans were apoplectic about Obama’s spending plan, necessitated by the 2008 financial crisis. Almost every Republican in Congress opposed it. They argued it would dangerously increase in the federal debt.

“Yesterday the Senate cast one of the most expensive votes in history,” intoned Senator Mitch McConnell. “Americans are wondering how we’re going to pay for all this.” Paul Ryan warned the nation was “heading for a debt crisis.”

Now, with America’s debt at the highest level since shortly after World War II – 77 percent of GDP – Trump and the GOP have enacted a tax law that by their own estimates will increase the debt by at least $1.5 trillion over the decade.

What happened to fiscal responsibility? McConnell, Ryan, and the rest of the GOP have gone mum about it. Politics came first: They and Trump had to enact the big tax cut in order to reward their wealthy patrons.

States’ rights used to be the second pillar of Republican thought.

For decades, Republicans argued that the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment protected the states from federal intermeddling.

They used states’ rights to resist desegregation; to oppose federal legislation protecting workers, consumers, and the environment; and to battle federal attempts to guarantee marriage rights for gays and lesbians.

When, in 2013, the Supreme Court relied on states’ rights to strike down the heart of the Voting Rights Act, then-Senator Jeff Sessions broke out the champagne. “good news!“ said the GOP’s leading advocate of states’ rights. =

But after a year of Trump, Republicans have come around to thinking states have few if any rights.

As Attorney General, Sessions has green-lighted a federal crackdown on marijuana in states that have legalized it.

He and Trump are also blocking sanctuary cities from receiving federal grants. (A federal judge recently stayed Trump’s executive order on grounds that it violates the Tenth Amendment, but Trump and Sessions are appealing the decision.)

Trump is also seeking to gut California’s tough environmental rules. His Interior Department is opening more of California’s federal land and coastline to oil and gas drilling, and Trump’s EPA is moving to repeal new restrictions on a type of heavily-polluting truck California was relying on to meet its climate and air quality goals.

Meanwhile, the Republican House has approved the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which would prevent states from enforcing their own laws barring concealed handguns against visitors from other states that permitted them.

For the new GOP, states’ rights be damned. Now it’s all about consolidating power in Washington, under Trump.

The third former pillar of Republicanism was a hard line on Russian aggression.

When Obama forged the New Start treaty with Moscow in 2010, Republicans in Congress charged that Vladimir Putin couldn’t be trusted to carry out any arms control agreement.

And they complained that Obama wasn’t doing enough to deter Putin in Eastern Ukraine. “Every time [Obama] goes on national television and threatens Putin or anyone like Putin, everybody’s eyes roll, including mine,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. “We have a weak and indecisive president that invites aggression.”

That was then. Now, despite explicit findings by American intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election – the most direct attack on American democracy ever attempted by a foreign power – Republicans in Congress want to give Russia a pass.

They don’t even want to take steps to prevent further Russian meddling. They’ve played down a January report by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warning that the Kremlin will likely move to influence upcoming U.S. elections, including those this year and in 2020.

The reason, of course, is the GOP doesn’t want to do anything that might hurt Trump or rile his followers.

The GOP under Trump isn’t the first political party to bend its principles to suit political expediency. But it may be the first to jettison its principles entirely, and over so short a time.

If Republicans no longer care about the federal debt, or state’s rights, or Russian aggression – what exactly do they care about? What are the core principles of today’s Republican Party?

Winning and getting even.

But as a year with Trump as president has shown, this is no formula for governing.

January 07, 2018

Could the Democratic Part Be Selfless Enough to Unite Behind a Third Party Candidate?

by John Lawrence, January 7, 2018

The next Presidential election in 2020 is crucial if the US is to remain intact as a republic and a democracy. We elected the "Producers" candidate in 2016. For those of you who don't know, the plot of the Producers involved the production of a play that the producers of the play intended to be a flop. Trump just wanted to increase his exposure and his bank account as he had made most of his money off of the "Trump" brand. He never intended to actually be President. Or at least that's how one story line goes. It makes sense. It made him a lot looser than Hillary who wanted desperately to be President. Maybe she was just too earnest.

The Dems and the Left in general need to get back to an economic based theme and not cater to every identity based minority. Trump won by appealing to the majority with a jobs based theme. He probably won't deliver. The fact that the stock market is going bonkers has nothing to do with the 50% of Americans who don't own stocks. The fact that equity in real estate is increasing has nothing to do with the increasing numbers that can't afford to rent much less buy a home. The fact that unemployment is low has nothing to do with the fact that millions are losing good paying jobs and replacing them with minimum wage jobs.

I would like to see third and fourth parties on the Left unite with the Dems on an economic based theme during the primary season, and then all those parties unite behind one candidate, no matter the Party, in the general election. Let the primary season present candidates from various parties. After that the Left should stand united behind basically Bernie Sanders' program in the last election. Infrastructure repairing and rebuilding, bankruptcy protection restored to student loan debtors, free or near free pre-school to graduate school for those who qualify and cannot afford it, strengthening the social safety net including Medicare for all (universal health care). These were some of the planks in Bernie's platform.

How will these programs be paid for? Very simple. Close half of the 1000 military bases staged in practically every country of the world. Trump said that other countries should pay for our protecting them. Well, let them. Take $500 billion away from the trillion dollar annual budget of the military-industrial complex. The US would still have the largest military budget in the world by far. Russia's military budget at $70 billion would still be one tenth of ours even if we cut ours in half! The US doesn't need to be the world's policeman (unless we get paid for it) nor does it need to be the world's hegemon. The slogan "Make America Great Again" should be converted to "Make the American People Greatt Again" by spending on programs that benefit them. Trump fooled them into thinking he was going to restore good paying jobs while all he's accomplished is giving tax breaks to the rich. He has totally backed out on making US allies pay for our military's protection.

Reducing the size and expenditures on the military budget while increasing expenditure on programs that will make the American people great again should be their motto. Education, health care, infrastructure, social security - these are the programs that will make the American people great again and reduce economic inequality. But watch out. The Repubs under Paul Ryan are coming for your social security on the grounds we don't have money to pay for it. No we don't as long as we give money to people who don't need it, and have military ambitions to be the world's hegemon and policeman. While they're at it, the next party in power in the US should reverse the Trump reversals of Obama policies on the environment, global warming and the banking sector. Do we want clean water, clean air, clean food, less corporate fraud, less weather disasters? I think that would make America great again.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and his fellow congressional Republicans have a very simple plan: now that they've further ballooned the national deficit with a massive tax giveaway to the rich, they want to slash spending on the safety net in the name of fiscal responsibility. Don't buy it for a second. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)

I have a simple request to journalists, columnist, pundits, and others writing about forthcoming efforts of Republicans to cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the anti-poverty programs that make up our safety net. Call such efforts “cuts.” Do not call them “reforms,” “changes,” “overhauls,” “fixes,” “reshaping,” “modernizing,” or any other euphemism that could easily be misconstrued. At least, do not do so without also clearly defining what they really are, which is cuts.

While D.C. insiders speak the unique creole of our swamp, there’s no reason to expect general readers to intuitively understand that when House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) says he plans to “reform” entitlements, he means to cut them. Journalists, in particular, should not do Ryan et al.’s bidding by assuming readers get the meaning behind the words.

Examples abound. To be fair, these are often otherwise informative pieces, but they sometimes adapt the intentionally obfuscating language of those who would cut these programs.

A recent Congressional Quarterly piece (no public link) probed the interesting political disagreement between Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on the wisdom of going after the safety net in an election year. In describing Ryan’s agenda, the piece noted (my bold, in all cases below) that “the Wisconsin Republican has detailed an ambitious effort to dramatically reshape Medicare, Medicaid and welfare programs that the GOP has long targeted as ripe for reforms. … Ryan has said he plans to use the budget reconciliation process for entitlement changes.”

CNN: “The House GOP caucus plans to work on entitlement reform next year as a way to ‘tackle the debt and the deficit,’ according to House Speaker Paul Ryan. … Ryan also noted that, in addition to health care, the GOP plans to work on reforming the US welfare system.” To its credit, the piece later cites Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) saying these reforms are really cuts, but why set this up as “he said, she said?” Ryan is talking about cuts, plain and simple, but lacks to courage to say so. His position should not be accommodated.

This Politico report talks about Ryan’s “obsession” with “fixing” the “ballooning entitlement state” and “tinkering with the social safety net.” Who could possibly be against “fixing” something! And “tinkering” certainly sounds awfully benign, especially in contrast to Ryan and the Republican’s actual, articulated plans to significantly cut programs that help low-income households.

Let me be clear. I’m not arguing against such cuts, at least not yet (that comes in a moment). Those advocating cuts to these programs have every right to make their case. But they’ve no right to mislead, which is, of course, the reason they employ such gilded language. And the media has no right to help them do so. To the contrary, it has an obligation to cut through their linguistic fog.

Along with the euphemisms for cuts, here are some other words and arguments politicians use to prevent us from understanding what they’re actually talking about.

Unsustainable: This is one the most misused, misunderstood words in budget debates. To say a program is unsustainable is almost always meaningless. Instead, what’s really being said here is that the politician is not willing to advocate for the resources necessary to meet the obligations of a program he disfavors, compared with one he likes. Medicare is unsustainable. Defense spending must go up.

It is unquestionably the case that our aging demographics mean that for a period, the costs of fully funding Social Security and Medicare will rise in a way that by 2035, they will require another 3 percentage points of GDP (1.3 for Social Security and 1.7 for Medicare/Medicaid). We can and should have good arguments as to whether that’s the best use of 3 more points of GDP, but there is no coherent argument that it would be impossible to do so.

The deficit, the debt! President Trump and the Republicans just added at least $1 trillion to the 10-year deficit with their deficit financed tax plan. Based on their rhetoric of extending tax cuts they themselves scheduled to expire, the hit to the debt could be twice as large. By so doing, they sacrificed their tactic of using bigger deficits as leverage to cut spending programs they oppose. Yes, I know they argue that the tax cuts will more than pay for themselves through higher growth rates, but that just makes my final point.

Cherry picking the scores. During the tax debate, the blogger Kevin Drum made an important point: If the tax cuts are going to lift growth as much as the Republicans say, then revenue generated by that growth can also help pay for social insurance and safety net programs. True, they cooked up those growth effects to sell the tax cuts, but they should be pressed to explain why, if they really believe the economy will now be growing much faster, the new revenue flooding in should only pay for regressive tax cuts as opposed to progressive social programs.

I’ve long maintained that the policy media has seriously picked up its game in the age of Trump. Both on health care and taxes, more often than not, journalists cut through the phony language and clearly identified who was expected to win and lose from the proposals.

They say here at The Washington Post that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” That’s surely true, and when we force the powerful to speak plainly, we light a match in the darkness.

December 22, 2017

They can't control Trump's tweeting, but they can control everything else because they hold the purse strings. They control the money. They got their tax breaks for the rich which of course Trump was in favor of also all the while trying to make a case that this was really "tax reform" that would help the middle class. Then they had a celebration in which Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan kowtowed to the Donald telling him how great he was. They wanted him to take full credit for something he had nothing to do with because ... well, they've got his number. Praise the hell out of him, let him spout off and blowhard all he wants. When it comes right down to it, they're in control. Trump is their useful idiot who will rubber stamp what they want, but take all the credit.

Other than that Trump is essentially reduced to issuing executive orders which was all Obama could do. So Trump now has the distinct pleasure of undoing all Obama's executive orders. The Generals will see to it that Trump doesn't do anything really stupid like start a nuclear war. They want to rev up old rivalries, but they don't want all out war. Just enough war to justify humongous defense budgets. That suits them perfectly. God forbid that peace should break out. There goes their money.

Trump's Russia connection will probably boil down to nothing more than a potential real estate deal or other business interests that would benefit the Trump empire. The business of America is business, and the business of the Trump administration is business that benefits the Trump administration. Much ado about nothing because the Mitch McConnells and Paul Ryans of the world have his back.

The best the Democrats can do is to keep harping on the fact that Trump and his fellow Republicans are not really in the business of helping the middle class. What they are doing and want to do more of is to help their own class - the rich. But Trump can spout off all he wants about creating jobs. The economy is not really in his hands, but he can put the best spin on economic events as they happen. Expect a big hole in the deficit similar to the one that occurred after the Reagan tax cuts. Then Reagan in a panic raised taxes. This bunch will probably revert to the "deficits don't matter" mantra. Well, they don't if the Fed can just print money.

December 21, 2017

Now That Republicans Have "Reformed" Taxes, They're Getting Ready to "Reform" Entitlements

by John Lawrence

Republicans are ecstatic about the fact that they have reformed the tax code giving huge tax breaks to the rich and very modest tax breaks to the middle class while running up the deficit by $1.6 trillion. But deficits don't matter do they as Dick Cheney once said. Yes they don't matter when it comes to war and reducing taxes on the rich. They do matter, however, when it comes to doing anything for the middle class and the poor. They do matter when the Democrats are in power and want to do anything constructive.

Deficits didn't matter either when it came to bailing out Wall Street after they totally made a mess of the economy in 2008. They were helped out by the Fed which took trillions of dollars of Wall Street's debts on its own balance sheet and then lowered the interest rates that Wall Street paid to zero while not doing a thing to lower the interest rates the general public paid on their mortgages or car payments. Wouldn't it be great if the Fed lowered rates to zero on mortgages, car payments or student loan debt? All of a sudden homeowners would see their payments cut in half. Most of mortgage payments are interest anyway.

But Wall Street makes its money off of consumer debt. If people paid cash for everything, it would put Wall Street out of business. The US economy runs on consumer debt and the war machine, of course. What if the Fed took consumer debt onto its balance sheet the way it took Wall Street's debt onto its balance sheet? You'd think that, since Wall Street can borrow money at zero interest, American consumers should be able to do that also. Or at least banks could afford to pay some interest on savings accounts. No, it doesn't work that way. When the interest rate goes up, then Wall Street will pay some interest on savings accounts because they need the money. When they can borrow at zero interest from the Fed, they don't need people's savings accounts so they pay no interest. Even though they pay no interest they sure do charge interest though. The spread is extremely profitable.

The Fed is flooding the economy with money with its quantitative easing policy. You'd think there would be a little to go around for infrastructure or for entitlement programs. But no, most of that money goes to already rich people who just use it to buy assets like stocks and real estate. This creates asset bubbles in those two markets so that housing prices are going out of sight for the average consumer. In the long run the Fed will have just forced the cost of housing to astronomical heights by giving free money to rich people. But that's how the American economy is set up. They print money for the rich, but they won't print money for the poor or take the debts of the poor onto the Fed's balance sheet.

Protesters risked arrest on Capitol Hill on Monday as they joined the final push by resistance groups to convince Republican legislators to vote against the Party's unpopular tax bill. (Photo: @NYJusticeLeague/Twitter)

Hours ahead of expected votes in the House and Senate on the Republican tax plan, a new poll released Tuesday by CNN shows that President Donald Trump's last hope at passing a major agenda item in 2017 will likely award him few points with voters. Sixty-six percent of those surveyed view the bill as mainly benefiting the wealthy.

Opposition to the bill—officially the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" but denounced as the "GOP Tax Scam" by critics—has gone up in the past month, with 55 percent saying they disapprove of the plan. Republicans including President Donald Trump have tried to push the narrative that the bill will lift middle class Americans, but it appears few voters are convinced—which makes sense given that nearly every independent analysis shows the benefits are wildly skewed to corporations and the rich.

As Congress headed for expected votes, constituents nationwide and advocacy groups kept up their momentum at protests directed at Republicans, several of whom are expected to receive their very own real estate tax breaks as a result of the legislation.

The House will vote on the #GOPTaxScam TODAY! This is the final chance to tell your Rep how this tax scam gives the rich & large corps massive tax cuts & makes tens of millions of working families pay the bill.

Protests were planned at the offices of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who announced Monday that she planned to support the bill, and on Wall Street, while People's Action urged supporters to continue calling their representatives to voice their opposition:

We have to make calls and tell every member of Congress that our lives are truly on the line. Our survival and that of our children are at risk.

We have to make sure they know that a vote for this tax plan is a vote against the people. There’s still time to stop this bill, but it’s not going to be easy. And that’s exactly why we need all hands on deck.

Contact your Senators and Representatives using the Capitol switchboard by dialing 202-224-3121 NOW.

Several analyses by tax policy groups have shown that the bill would offer short-term, relatively minor benefits to the majority of Americans, while disproportionately benefiting corporations and the wealthiest households with permanent tax cuts.

The Tax Policy Center's latest analysis shows that under the bill, "higher income households receive larger average tax cuts as a percentage of after-tax income" and while average tax bills would go down for all income groups in 2018, millions of lower- and middle-class working families would actually see their taxes go up within a decade.

Americans for Tax Fairness reached similar conclusions in their analysis last month, reporting that 53 percent of the bill's tax cuts go to corporations and the rich, and that those cuts are largely paid for by taking away healthcare from working families.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) spoke on a radio show Monday about "entitlement reform"—slashes to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—in order to tackle the national debt, which is expected to soar by $1.5 trillion as a result of the tax bill.

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December 18, 2017

The Republican tax plan to be voted on this week is likely to pass. “The American people have waited 31 long years to see our broken tax code overhauled,” the leaders of the Koch’s political network insisted in a letter to members of Congress, urging swift approval.

They added that the time had come to put “more money in the pockets of American families.”

Please. The Koch network doesn’t care a fig about the pockets of American families. It cares about the pockets of the Koch network.

It has poured money into almost every state in an effort to convince Americans that the tax cut will be good for them. Yet most Americans don’t believe it.

In counties that Trump won but Obama carried in 2012, only 17 percent say they expect to pay less in taxes, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Another 25 percent say they expected their family would actually pay higher taxes.

Most Americans know that the tax plan is payback for major Republican donors. Gary Cohn, Trump’s lead economic advisor, even conceded in an interview that “the most excited group out there are big CEOs, about our tax plan.”

By passing it, Republican donors will save billions – paying a lower top tax rate, doubling the amount their heirs can receive tax-free, and treating themselves as “pass-through” businesses able to deduct 20 percent of their income (effectively allowing Trump to cut his tax rate in half, if and when he pays taxes).

They’ll make billions more as their stock portfolios soar because corporate taxes are slashed.

The biggest winners by far will be American oligarchs such as the Koch brothers; Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley investor; Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate; Woody Johnson, owner of the New York Jets football team and heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune; and Carl Icahn, the activist investor.

The oligarchs are the richest of the richest 1 percent. They’ve poured hundreds of millions into the GOP and Trump. Half of all contributions to the first phase of the 2016 election came from just 158 families, along with the companies they own or control.

The giant tax cut has been their core demand from the start. They also want to slash regulations, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and cut everything else government does except for defense – including Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

In return, they have agreed to finance Trump and the GOP, and mount expensive public relations campaigns that magnify their lies.

Trump has fulfilled his end of the bargain. He’s blinded much of his white working-class base to the reality of what’s happening by means of his racist, xenophobic rants and policies.

The American oligarchs couldn’t care less about what all this will cost America.

Within their gated estates and private jets, they’re well insulated from the hatefulness and divisiveness,

They don’t worry about whether Social Security or Medicare will be there for them in their retirement because they’ve put away huge fortunes.

Climate change doesn’t concern them because their estates are fully insured against hurricanes, floods, and wildfires.

They don’t care about public schools because their families don’t attend them. They don’t care about public transportation because they don’t use it. They don’t care about the poor because they don’t see them.

They don’t worry about the rising budget deficit because they borrow directly from global capital markets.

Truth to tell, they don’t even care that much about America because their personal and financial interests are global.

They are living in their own separate society, and they want Congress and the President to represent them, not the rest of us.

The Republican Party is their vehicle. Fox News is their voice. Trump is their champion. The new tax plan is their triumph.

But if polls showing most Americans against the tax cut are any guide, that triumph may be short lived. Americans are catching on.

The recent electoral results in Virginia and Alabama offer further evidence.

A tidal wave of public loathing is growing across the land – toward Trump, the GOP, and the oligarchs they serve; and to the deception, the wealth, and the power that underlies them.

That wave could crash in the midterm elections of 2018. If so, the current triumph of the oligarchs will be the start of their undoing.

December 17, 2017

Here are the 3 main Republican arguments in favor of the Republican tax plan, followed by the truth.

1. It will make American corporations competitive with foreign corporations, which are taxed at a lower rate.

Rubbish.

(1) American corporations now pay an effective rate (after taking deductions and tax credits) that’s just about the same as most foreign based corporations pay.

(2) Most of these other countries also impose a “Value Added Tax” on top of the corporate tax.

(3) When we cut our corporate rate from 35% to 20%, other nations will cut their corporate rates in order to be competitive with us – so we gain nothing anyway.

(4) Most big American corporations who benefit most from the Republican tax plan aren’t even “American.” Over 35 percent of their shareholders are foreign (which means that by cutting corporate taxes we’re giving a big tax cut to those foreign shareholders). 20 percent of their employees are foreign, while many Americans work for foreign-based corporations.

(5) The “competitiveness” of America depends on American workers, not on “American” corporations. But this tax plan will make it harder to finance public investments in education, health, and infrastructure, on which the future competitiveness of American workers depends.

(6) American corporations already have more money than they know what to do with. Their profits are at record levels. They’re using them to buy back their shares of stock, and raise executive pay. That’s what they’ll do with the additional $1 trillion they’ll receive in this tax cut.

***

2. With the tax cut, big corporations and the rich will invest and create more jobs.

Baloney.

(1) Job creation doesn’t trickle down. After Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush cut taxes on the top, few jobs and little growth resulted. America cut taxes on corporations in 2004 in an attempt to get them to bring their profits home from abroad, and what happened? They didn’t invest. They just bought up more shares of their own stock, and increased executive pay.

(2) Companies expand and create jobs when there’s more demand for their goods and services. That demand comes from customers who have the money to buy what companies sell. Those customers are primarily the middle class and poor, who spend far more of their incomes than the rich. But this tax bill mostly benefits the rich.

(3) At a time when the richest 1 percent already have 40 percent of all the wealth in the country, it’s immoral to give them even more – especially when financed partly by 13 million low-income Americans who will lose their health coverage as a result of this tax plan (according to the Congressional Budget Office), and by subsequent cuts in safety-net programs necessitated by increasing the deficit by $1.5 trillion.

***

3. It will give small businesses an incentive to invest and create more jobs.

Untrue.

(1) At least 85 percent of small businesses earn so little they already pay the lowest corporate tax rate, which this plan doesn’t change.

(2) In fact, because the tax plan bestows much larger rewards on big businesses, they’ll have more ability to use predatory tactics to squeeze small firms and force them out of business.

***

Don’t let your Uncle Bob be fooled: Republicans are voting for this because their wealthy patrons demand it. Their tax plan will weaken our economy for years – reducing demand, widening inequality, and increasing the national debt by at least $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

Shame on the greedy Republican backers who have engineered this. Shame on Trump and the Republicans who have lied to the public about its consequences.

President Donald Trump speaks to members of the White House Press Corps prior to his Marine One departure from the South Lawn of the White House December 15, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Asked about the GOP tax bill, which is expected to hit the floor of the House and Senate for a final vote early next week, Trump said: "I think we're doing very well, it's something that's going to be monumental. It will be the biggest tax increase—or tax cut—in the history of our country."

As The Intercept's Ryan Grim noted in an analysis earlier this month, the GOP tax bill is "routinely referred to as a $1.5 trillion tax cut. And, in some ways, that's true: On net, it would reduce the amount of taxes collected by the Treasury by about $1.5 trillion over 10 years."

However, "that figure masks the eye-popping scale and audacity of the GOP's rushed restructuring of the economy," Grim adds. "[The bill,] properly described, is two things: the largest tax cut—and also the biggest tax increase—in American history."

This tax increase, as research by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has found, would primarily be shouldered by low-income and middle class Americans. Additionally, while the GOP bill would give corporations permanent tax cuts, many of the cuts for middle class and low-income Americans would expire after a decade.

As Common Dreamsreported on Wednesday, House and Senate Republicans reached a backroom "deal" that tilts the benefits of their bill even further toward the wealthiest Americans by reducing the top marginal tax rate from from 39.6 percent to 37 percent.

"Overall, in 2027—when only the corporate tax cuts, slower inflation measure, and individual mandate repeal would remain in place—the Senate bill would, on average, raise taxes or reduce federal expenditures for households with incomes below $75,000 by about $60 billion—while still giving large tax reductions (through its corporate tax cuts) to those at the top," noted CBPP's Chuck Marr.

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November 27, 2017

One of the most dangerous consequences of this awful period in American life is the denigration of the truth, and of institutions and people who tell it.

There are two kinds of liars – fools and knaves. Fools lie because they don’t know the truth. Knaves lie because they intend to mislead.

Trump is both, because he doesn’t even care enough about the truth to find out what it is. He’ll say whatever he thinks will get people to believe what he wants them to believe.

What about people like Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s point person on the Republican tax bills now making their way through Congress?

Mnuchin continues to insist that the legislation puts a higher tax burden on people earning more than $1 million a year, and reduce taxes on everyone else. “I can tell you that virtually everybody in the middle class will get a tax cut, and will get a significant tax cut,” Mnuchin says repeatedly.

But the prestigious Tax Policy Center concludes that by 2025, almost all of the benefits of both bills will have gone to the richest 1 percent, while upper-middle-class payers will pay higher taxes and those at the lower levels will receive only modest benefits.

So is Mnuchin a fool? His career before he became Treasury Secretary doesn’t suggest so. He graduated from Yale, and worked for seventeen years for investment bank Goldman Sachs.

Once, at a town hall in Wisconsin, someone asked known anti-poverty crusader Paul Ryan (R-WI) the following question:

“I know that you’re Catholic, as am I, and it seems to me that most of the Republicans in the Congress are not willing to stand with the poor and working class as evidenced in the recent debates about health care and the anticipated tax reform. So I’d like to ask you how you see yourself upholding the church’s social teaching that has the idea that God is always on the side of the poor and dispossessed, as should we be.”

It’s a tricky one, but if you want to simultaneously cut taxes for rich people and benefits for poor people, you need to be ready for it. So, just in time for the tax debate, I’ve written a handy step-by-step guide on how to convince your constituents that a help-the-rich, whack-the-poor agenda is really what’s best for everybody:

1. Say you share the same goals.

Let’s be honest: It sounds pretty bad to say that you want to take from the poor to give to the rich. So, don’t do it! The trick here is to convince people that you’re with them on the importance of helping the poor. You just disagree about “how to achieve that goal.”

Congratulations! You’ve just turned a profound moral question about whether we should help the poor or the rich into what appears to be a minor disagreement between ethically equivalent opinions.

2. Direct attention away from what it means to be poor.

Lots of people think poor people simply don’t have enough money to meet their families’ basic needs. You know better. Tell them what the poor really need is “upward mobility,” “economic growth,” and “equality of opportunity.” Not only do these airy concepts all sound really good—who could be against any of them?—they also let you pivot away from the obvious solution: giving people the money, food, health care, and other necessities they lack.

True, Ryan’s agenda doesn’t provide any of those things. But don’t worry! If you just repeat the lie that tax cuts for the rich spur economic growth, no one will even have time to dig into the intimate connection between inequality of outcomes and inequality of opportunity.

You can’t pull off the enlightened nice-guy routine if you’re blaming poor people for their problems outright. You need to do it subtly. Instead of saying, “Poor people are poor because they’re lazy,” try saying, “We’ve got to change our approach … and always encourage work, never discourage work.” Never mind that most people who can work already do, or that wages are so low it’s possible (and quite common) to work full-time and still be in poverty. People are predisposed to believe that our success relative to those less fortunate is a result of our superior work ethic and talents, rather than a product of race, class, gender, and/or other forms of privilege and sheer dumb luck. The more you tap into that inclination, the more people will oppose helping those less fortunate and support imposing burdensome requirements on the Have Nots instead.

4. Choose unrepresentative examples and statistics.

Paul Ryan loves to tell people that “our poverty rates are about the same as they were when we started [the] War on Poverty,” which is more or less what the official poverty measure shows. Does it bother him that the official measure excludes the effects of the very programs he says aren’t working? Nope. It shouldn’t bother you, either. You also shouldn’t feel obligated to mention the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which shows that anti-poverty programs cut poverty nearly in half and have reduced poverty by 10 percentage points since the late 1960s. After all, Ryan doesn’t!

Similarly, Ryan likes to lament the case of “a single mom getting 24 grand in benefits with two kids who,” because of the way the safety net is designed, “will lose 80 cents on the dollar if she goes and takes a job.” The extraordinary rareness of this case doesn’t phase him, nor does the fact that his proposed remedies for this problem make life for that single mom—and thousands of others—much worse. He’s fine with leaving those inconvenient details out, and you should be fine with doing so, too.

5. Hammer “focus on outcomes” rhetoric.

Focusing on outcomes is popular in many fields, so this talking point—that “instead of measuring success based on how much money we spend or how many programs we create or how many people are on those programs … [we should] measure success in poverty on outcomes”—is very effective. The fact that nobody actually measures program effectiveness by how much money we spend or by the number of programs we create is irrelevant, as is the large and growing body of research showing that the safety net boosts the long-run outcomes of children growing up in poor families. As long as you contend that we currently don’t focus on outcomes, you can make our anti-poverty programs seem misguided.

There will always be those who oppose funneling money from low- and middle-income Americans to the wealthy and corporations. But if you stick to these tried-and-true steps from Paul Ryan, before you know it, you’ll have convinced a constituency (and perhaps even yourself!) that helping the rich is actually about helping the poor. Or, at the very least, people will be too confused to know the difference.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on 34justice.com. It has been edited for length and content.

The National Day of Action is planned for Monday as the Trump resistance fights the Republican tax plan, which is expected to raise taxes on middle-income Americans while cutting them for corporations and the richest families. (Photo: @Indivisible12th/Twitter)

The grassroots resistance group Indivisible was gearing up on Friday for a planned National Day of Action, targeting Republican senators who are thought to be potential "no" votes on the GOP's tax plan—in a final push to keep the bill from passing. The Senate is expected to vote on the plan as soon as Thursday.

The group was preparing for #TrumpTaxScam Sit-Ins taking place across the country on Monday, at the offices of several senators including Arizona's John McCain and Jeff Flake, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and Susan Collins (R-Maine)—focusing attention on some of the lawmakers who were targeted last summer during the fight against the Republican healthcare plan.

"Republicans have made it crystal clear: the Trump Tax Scam fight and the TrumpCare fight are one and the same," the group wrote on its website, noting the Senate Finance Committee's plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, which was revealed earlier this month. The move would leave 13 million Americans uninsured according to the Congressional Budget Office—in the interest of reducing the federal deficit that would be caused by the Republican plan to lower taxes for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

Members of the Trump resistance are expected to assemble at the offices of so-called "moderate" Republicans to demand that the elected officials listen to their concerns about the tax bill, which groups including Americans for Tax Fairness and the Tax Policy Center say would eventually raise taxes for middle-income Americans, after giving them temporary, meager tax cuts.

"A sit-in expresses that your group is willing to sit there until your senator or his or her staff address your concerns—that you are demanding to be heard," read Indivisible's breakdown of the action plan. "That is what makes these actions powerful."

Americans for Tax Fairness released a study on Tuesday showing that 82 million middle-class households would pay more in taxes in 2027, should the GOP plan become law. The Tax Policy Center's analysis came to the same conclusion this week, while finding that the plan would only produce $169 billion in additional revenue over the next decade, while adding a $1.5 trillion deficit.

As of Friday, at least 50 events were planned as part of Indivisible's National Day of Action.

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In total, the House GOP tax plan would raise taxes by 400 percent on many graduate students, the Harvard Crimson estimated. (Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)

"Soaking broke-ass grad students to pay for a private jet subsidy. All-out class war on the 99 percent."

"An educated population is dangerous to an oligarchy. The GOP claims to be for jobs and economic prosperity for all, but this action shows otherwise." —Jess Phoenix, California congressional candidateThat was how one commentator described a pair of provisions buried in the GOP tax plan that passed the House on Thursday and is likely headed to the Senate floor for a vote as early as next week.

One provision—crammed in the middle of the latest version of the so-called "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act"—would provide a windfall to the wealthy few who own or lease private planes by exempting them from certain taxes related to "maintenance and support," "the hiring and training of pilots and crew," and "administrative services such as scheduling, flight planning, weather forecasting, obtaining insurance, and establishing and complying with safety standards."

Graduate students, however, would not fare so well if the GOP plan becomes law.

As CNBCreports, "[s]ome programs provide graduate students with a modest stipend for food and housing. For instance, Ryan Hill, a fourth-year Ph.D. student at MIT, receives a $30,000 living stipend and a tuition waiver allowing him to forego paying $50,000 in tuition. He currently pays taxes on his $30,000 stipend, but under the proposed House tax bill, his tuition waiver would also be taxed—meaning he would be taxed as if he was earning $80,000 a year."

In total, the House GOP tax plan would raise taxes by 400 percent on many graduate students, the Harvard Crimsonestimated.

Such a tax on students who are already drowning in loan debt "would be devastating," Samantha Hernandez, legislative director of the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students, toldWired. "I monitor all legislation at the state and federal levels that could affect graduate and professional students, and this is just—this would have the greatest negative impact of anything I've seen."

Historian Nick Kapur pointed to his own experience as a PhD student and described the proposed tax hike as "the height of Republican insanity."

Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, introduced by House Republicans, is certainly about tax cuts (but almost entirely for wealthy Americans and corporations) but hardly about jobs at all. The 429-page whopper of a bill is a medley of discredited fiscal policies and political gifts to the GOP’s conservative base. It is also a crucial marker for whether or not Republican overreach will work. Having failed to pass health care reform, as I predicted earlier this year, the GOP’s tax reform bill is arguably the biggest test of the party’s ability to sell greed in the guise of helping most Americans.

Even more so than President Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan has owned the heart of the tax reform bill and deserves the most scorn for his hypocrisy in selling the plan as beneficial to the public. Ryan, joined by Texas Rep. Kevin Brady (who introduced the bill into the House Ways and Means Committee last week), surrounded himself with a group of ordinary-looking Americans and claimed the bill was “for the middle-class families in this country who deserve a break.” Without showing an iota of shame, Ryan added, “It is for the families who are out there living paycheck to paycheck, who just keep getting squeezed.”

But claims about how the bill will benefit ordinary people are being debunked. Before the bill was formally introduced, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed on Twitter: “The average American family would get a $4,000 raise under the President’s tax cut plan.” She innocently asked, “So how could any member of Congress be against it?” Amazingly, that $4,000 figure was not drawn from estimates of what “average” Americans might save on their tax bill, but rather was based on an unsubstantiated assumption that corporate America will be floating in so much extra cash from passage of the bill that some of its immense wealth will trickle down to Americans in the form of wage increases. Many studies show that trickle-down economics is nothing but a trick—one designed to help the rich.

Vice President Mike Pence presiding over the Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017, during the Senate's vote on Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos. On Tuesday night, Pence returned to the chamber again to a break another tie. This time it was to make sure it's easier in the future for financial service companies and other Wall Street darlies to make it easier to rip-off consumers. (Photo: Senate Television)

"The vice president only shows up in this body when the rich and powerful need him." —Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)While in the end it was two Republicans, Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Kennedy of Louisiana, who joined with Democrats and the Senate's two Independents in voting against the resolution, Pence broke the 50-50 tie in order to scrap the rule.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), an outspoken propopent of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's rule which sought to restrict use of forced arbitration clauses, condemned both Pence and her Republican colleagues for trying to undermine consumer protections by delivering a "gift to the bank lobbyists."

"Let's be clear: No organization that represents actual human beings wants the [Senate] to reverse the [CFPB's] arbitration rule," Warren declared in a pair of tweets. "Servicemembers, vets, seniors, and small businesses all support the rule. Only people who don't? Bank lobbyists. Oh, and Equifax."

In a nearly eight-minute speech objecting to the passage of resolution, Warren explained that at a time when "millions of Americans of all parties think Washington is rigged against them," the vote on Tuesday night should be considered "Exhibit A."

Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, blasted the Senate Republicans.

"Voting to allow banks and other financial institutions to rip off customers with impunity is a savage attack on American consumers," Weissman said in a statment. By overturning the rule, he continued, Republicans "are ensuring that predatory banks, payday lenders, credit card companies and other bad actors in the financial industry can steal from Main Street

It was during his floor speech against the passage of the resolution when Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) learned that Pence had arrived to provide the deciding vote.

"The vice president only shows up in this body," announced Brown, "when the rich and powerful need him."

Both Warren and Weissman suggested killing the rule would be a major betrayal of Trump's repeated promises to "drain the swam" and protect regular Americans from the ravages and greed of Wall Street predators.

"If President Donald Trump wants to remain true to his promise to defeat cronyism, he should veto this resolution," said Weissman. "But we're not holding our breath, given that he has staffed his Cabinet and White House with Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street refugees."

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Jared Kushner, senior advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence attend a joint statemen in the Rose Garden held by U.S. President Donald Trump and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong October 23, 2017. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Just days after 51 Senate Republicans approved a budget resolution that paves the way for over a trillion dollars in cuts to life-saving safety net programs and a massive windfall for the wealthy, White House staffers teamed up with the President Donald Trump's rich donors to launch a multi-million dollar sales campaign aimed at winning over the American people, who polls have found are overwhelmingly opposed to slashing taxes for millionaires, billionaires, and large corporations.

"The GOP's plan to sell its tax bill is obvious: lie." —Ben Wikler, MoveOn.orgLate Monday, top White House officials quietly met with leaders of the "non-profit" America First Policies, which is affiliated with the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action. As Politico's Alex Isenstadt reports, both organizations have raised around $25 million in 2017, and the groups are looking to "play a more visible role" in the struggle to convince Americans that enormous tax breaks for corporations and the top one percent will primarily benefit the working class.

Non-partisan analyses have shown that the Trump-GOP plan, contrary to White House talking points, would disproportionately favor the rich.

Isenstadt summarized the White House donor meeting:

Those involved in Monday's gathering included Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers. Also present were Brian Walsh, Brad Parscale, Katie Walsh, and Corey Lewandowski—all top strategists for the pro-Trump nonprofit America First Policies.

During the course of the hour-long meeting, top officials with America First Policies signaled plans to wage an aggressive effort to push tax reform, according to four people with knowledge of the discussion. The group told the White House it was planning to spend in the millions.

Trump is also set to meet with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill Tuesday, where he hopes to "forge unity" behind a plan that critics have denounced as a "tax scam."

The White House's gathering with well-heeled donors and congressional Republicans to "plot" its tax plan sales campaign came as resistance groups are also preparing for a long fight against the Trump administration's efforts.

As Common Dreamsreported last week, MoveOn.org and a coalition of progressive tax organizations are teaming up to mobilize and counter White House and GOP "turbo spin mode."

Ben Wikler, Washington director of MoveOn.org, reiterated in a Twitter thread late Monday the importance of calling attention to the potentially devastating consequences of the Republican tax push and remaining focused amid the "constant barrage" of Trump-related chaos.

"The GOP's plan to sell its tax bill is obvious: lie. The longer the debate rages, the more their lies crumble. So they want speed. We delay," Wikler wrote. "The GOP knows their donors will drop them like a hot rock if they don't deliver tax cuts for their billionaires. Works for me. Let's do that... and in the process, we just might rescue healthcare, pell grants, disaster preparedness, and every other damn thing the federal government does."

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"Another dark deed done: GOP passes obscene budget to slash Medicare/Medicaid & explode the deficit – all in the name of tax cuts for the 1%."—Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon)

Along strict party lines, the Republican-controlled Senate on Thursday night voted to pass a sweeping budget measure—one criticized as both "despicable" and "horrific" for providing massive giveaways to corporations and the super-rich while eviscerating funding for social programs, healthcare, education, and affordable housing.

The measure passed by 51-49 vote, with only one Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, joining every Democrat and the chamber's two Independents who voted against it. Its approval now paves that way for massive tax giveaways to the wealthy and corporations envisioned by President Donald Trump and the GOP in both the House and the Senate.

"51 Republican Senators just voted to cut Medicaid by $1 trillion and Medicare by $500 billion so that millionaires and corporations can get a tax cut. It's immoral and despicable," said TJ Helmstetter, a spokesperson for Americans for Tax Fairness, in a statement immediately following the vote.

October 16, 2017

Every Republican politician seems to fear being primaried more than they fear any possible Democratic opponent. Steve Bannon is threatening to run more extreme candidates in Republican primaries which he just assumes will displace incumbents. Incumbents are running scared, not of Democrats in the general election but of more extreme Republicans running against them in the primary. The districts have been gerrymandered to suit the specifications of Republicans so they need not fear losing to a Democrat.

This phenomenon of being primaried and losing to the more extreme candidate wouldn't be possible if the groundwork of anger and extremism hadn't been laid by hate talk radio and Fox news, pretty much the only mind food fed to citizens living in the hinterlands. They get a daily dose of anger-stoking from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones with the result that they are mad as hell about anything especially anything connected with Barrack Obama or Hillary Clinton who have been thoroughly demonized day after day after day.

This makes it possible that no candidate is too extreme for hinterland rural voters for whom guns, fossil fuels and the military are mixed into a toxic stew that nobody better disrespect. Whatever Democrats or urban citizens are for, they are against. The wellspring of hatred has prepared them to vote for the more extreme gun loving candidate. And then people wonder about the motive behind the doings of a Stephen Paddock. I want to know what was his media consumption like. That will probably give a clue as to his motives.

Democrats just don't get it. Politics isn't any more about appealing to the rational interests of voters. It's about appealing to the resentments and hatreds of voters. It's about a tribal brand that they say yes to regardless of whether or not its in their self-interest to do so, and it's not about appealing to either their self-interest or the 'better angels of our nature.' It's not about asking what you can do for your country as John Kennedy so famously asked. That sentiment is long gone. For the red tribe it's about hatred, and it's stoked with a daily dose from right wing media.

I think there needs to be a new brand for a political party, since the Democrat brand has been so thoroughly demonized, with a platform purely on an economic basis ala Bernie Sanders. That and un-gerrymandering the districts just might attract enough rational voters to tilt the balance away from the red state Republican haters.

October 11, 2017

Trump and conservatives in Congress are planning a big tax cut for millionaires and billionaires. To justify it they’re using the oldest song in their playbook, claiming tax cuts on the rich will trickle down to working families in the form of stronger economic growth.

Baloney. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke. Just look at the evidence:

1. Clinton’s tax increase on the rich hardly stalled the economy. In 1993, Bill Clinton raised taxes on top earners from 31 percent to 39.6 percent. Conservatives predicted economic disaster. Instead, the economy created 23 million jobs and the economy grew for 8 straight years in what was then the longest expansion in history. The federal budget went into surplus.

2. George W. Bush’s big tax cuts for the rich didn’t grow the economy. In 2001and 2003, George W. Bush lowered the top tax rate to 35 percent while also cutting top rates on capital gains and dividends. Conservative supply-siders predicted an economic boom. Instead, the economy barely grew at all, and then in 2008 it collapsed. Meanwhile, the federal deficit ballooned.

3. Obama’s tax hike on the rich didn’t slow the economy. At the end of 2012, President Obama struck a deal to restore the 39.6 percent top tax rate and raise tax rates on capital gains and dividends. Once again, supply-side conservatives predicted doom. Instead, the economy grew steadily, and the expansion is still continuing.

4. The Reagan recovery of the early 1980s wasn’t driven by Reagan’s tax cut. Conservative supply-siders point to Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. But the so-called Reagan recovery of the early 1980s was driven by low interest rates and big increase in government spending.

5. Kansas cut taxes on the rich and is a basket case. California raised them and is thriving. In 2012, Kansas slashed taxes on top earners and business owners, while California raised taxes on top earners to the highest state rate in the nation. Since then, California has had among the strongest economic growth of any state, while Kansas has fallen behind most other states.

So don’t fall for supply-side, trickle-down nonsense. Lower taxes on the rich don’t generate growth and jobs. They only make the rich even richer, at a time of raging inequality, and they cause bigger budget deficits.

[*Our thanks to Alexandra Thornton and Seth Hanlon from the Center for American Progress]

Physicians and public health researchers Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein estimated in an analysis released Friday that, if passed, the Graham-Cassidy repeal bill could kill as many as 41,600 people by 2027. (Photo: Dong question/Flickr/cc)

The Republican Party's last-ditch effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act was dealt a major blow Friday when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) announced that he "cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal," which analysts have called the most "brutal and deadly" version of Trumpcare yet.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is expected to bring the legislation to the floor for a vote before the end of next week.

Physicians and public health researchers Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein estimated in an analysis released Friday that, if passed, the Graham-Cassidy repeal bill could kill tens of thousands of people per year.

"The Graham-Cassidy bill—what we're calling 'The Undertaker Full Employment Act'—would cut health coverage by 14 million Americans in 2020, rising to at least 32 million in 2027," Dr. Woolhandler said in a statement. "That means 18,200 extra deaths in the first year, climbing to 41,600 annually within a decade."

As I have repeatedly stressed, healthcare reform legislation ought to be the product of regular order in the Senate. Committees of jurisdiction should mark up legislation with input from all committee members, and send their bill to the floor for debate and amendment. That is the only way we might achieve bipartisan consensus on lasting reform, without which a policy that affects one-fifth of our economy and every single American family will be subject to reversal with every change of administration and congressional majority.

I would consider supporting legislation similar to that offered by my friends Senators Graham and Cassidy were it the product of extensive hearings, debate and amendment. But that has not been the case. Instead, the specter of September 30th budget reconciliation deadline has hung over this entire process.

We should not be content to pass health care legislation on a party-line basis, as Democrats did when they rammed Obamacare through Congress in 2009. If we do so, our success could be as short-lived as theirs when the political winds shift, as they regularly do. The issue is too important, and too many lives are at risk, for us to leave the American people guessing from one election to the next whether and how they will acquire health insurance. A bill of this impact requires a bipartisan approach.

Senators Alexander and Murray have been negotiating in good faith to fix some of the problems with Obamacare. But I fear that the prospect of one last attempt at a strictly Republican bill has left the impression that their efforts cannot succeed. I hope they will resume their work should this last attempt at a partisan solution fail.

I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal. I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried. Nor could I support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will effect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it. Without a full CBO score, which won't be available by the end of the month, we won’t have reliable answers to any of those questions.

I take no pleasure in announcing my opposition. Far from it. The bill's authors are my dear friends, and I think the world of them. I know they are acting consistently with their beliefs and sense of what is best for the country. So am I.

I hope that in the months ahead, we can join with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to arrive at a compromise solution that is acceptable to most of us, and serves the interests of Americans as best we can.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the estimated number of deaths that could result from the Graham-Cassidy legislation. It's actually higher than indicated, but was not stated properly.

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September 17, 2017

Have you noticed that there’s no Trump tax plan and no Republican tax plan? All they’ve come up with so far is a bunch of platitudes about how nice it would be to cut taxes, simplify the tax code, and spur economic growth.

Who doesn’t support these nice goals?

The reason there’s no tax plan is congressional Republicans are hopelessly divided on it.

Right-wing Republicans (the “Freedom Caucus” along with what’s left of the Tea Party) are most interested in reducing the size of the government and shrinking the federal deficit and debt.

Corporate and Wall Street Republicans – along with Donald Trump – are most interested in cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy. They have the backing the GOP’s big business donors who stand to make a bundle off tax cuts.

Here’s the problem. You can’t have a giant tax cut for corporations and the wealthy, and at the same time shrink the federal deficit and debt – unless you make gigantic cuts in government spending on things the American public wants and needs.

According to the Congress’s own Joint Committee on Taxation, Trump’s proposed corporate tax cuts alone would reduce federal revenue by $2 trillion over 10 years.

Cuts of this size inevitably have to come out of the federal government’s three biggest expenditures, together accounting for over two-thirds of total government spending – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and defense.

Even if you eliminated everything in the rest of the federal budget – from education to meals on wheels – you’re not going to get nearly enough to pay for the giant tax cuts Trump and his corporate and Wall Street Republicans are talking about.

But they wouldn’t dare shave a hair off Social Security. Americans who have paid into it for their lifetimes expect that it’s going to be there when they retire. Social Security is already facing some financial strains, and no politician with half a brain is going to slash it.

Medicare is almost as popular. Recall the Republican signs at Obamacare rallies that read “Don’t Take Away My Medicare.”

As to Medicaid, well, if Republicans learned one thing from the buzz saw they ran into over the Affordable Care Act it’s that they better not mess with Medicaid because a huge percentage of America’s elderly depends on it.

Which leaves defense spending. But wait. Donald Trump is on record as pledging to expand defense spending by 10 percent – $48 billion.

Unless it is reauthorized by the end of September, the National Flood Insurance Program, which is nearly $25 billion in debt, will lose most of its borrowing power at a time when it will begin making payouts on claims on the Texas Gulf Coast. And President Trump has promised to work with Congress on a federal aid package for affected communities in Texas.

But that aid request puts many Texas Republicans in Congress in a bind four years in the making. In 2013, all but one Texas Republican who was serving in Congress then and is still in office now voted against an aid package for New York and New Jersey following Hurricane Sandy.

"The congressional members in Texas are hypocrites,"New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a Trump ally, said this week. "I said back in 2012, they’d be proven to be hypocrites. It was just a matter of time." See a clip below:

Christie took direct aim at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who voted against Sandy help four years ago, today on "Morning Joe:"

July 27, 2017

"We really are in a fight for our lives. Yet we’re motivated not just by fear but also by moral outrage. We know how fundamentally wrong it is to deprive people of health care." (Photo: CSPAN)

On Tuesday, 50 Republican senators showed contempt for their constituents by voting to move forward on repealing our health care, with Vice President Mike Pence stepping in to break the tie.

Nine GOP senators later broke ranks in a late-night session to vote down the Senate’s toxic version of the bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) – which would have rolled back much of the Affordable Care Act and gutted Medicaid, ending coverage for 23 million – but there are more votes to come, including one that may simply repeal care and and strip coverage from 32 million.

GOP leaders will want the new version to look just like their previous versions: cut taxes for corporations and the rich, raise the price of coverage for the rest of us, unravel Medicaid, and take health care from 22 to 24 million people.

Ohio’s Sen. Rob Portman also caved, representing a state where hundreds of thousands of people finally got coverage because of expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

It was extremely irresponsible of Portman, Capito, and Heller – who have all expressed concern for constituents enrolled in Medicaid – to throw their weight behind this reckless process without a clear plan for protecting Medicaid coverage.

They need to show this is more than talk. Now more than ever, their constituents need them to stand strong, resist any bullying, and protect Medicaid and health care overall. They’ll do that, if they really do care about their constituents.

Like these heroes, tens of thousands of people have shown up at protests and town halls, often speaking up for the first time in their lives. In every corner of the country, people have put their senators on speed-dial, camped out in congressional offices, and rallied friends.

We really are in a fight for our lives. Yet we’re motivated not just by fear but also by moral outrage. We know how fundamentally wrong it is to deprive people of health care.

And our fight isn’t over. Republican leaders wanted to put health care repeal on Trump’s desk in January. It’s the end of July, they’re still scrambling. That’s because of us.

In the coming days, let’s keep making calls and showing up at rallies and protests. Let’s track every vote this week, and raise the pressure on senators and representatives alike if repeal moves to a conference committee.

We’ve shown an incredible persistence in our fight. We’ll show plenty more when it comes to holding politicians accountable for a vote that favors big-money bullying over the people they’re supposed to represent.

June 27, 2017

Facing intransigent Republican opposition, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has told senators he will delay a vote on his legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, dealing President Trump an embarrassing setback on a key part of his agenda.

WASHINGTON — The Senate bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act was edging toward collapse on Monday after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said it would increase the number of people without health insurance by 22 million by 2026.

Two Republicans, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky, said Monday that they would vote against even debating the health care bill, joining Senator Dean Heller of Nevada, who made the same pledge on Friday. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin hinted that he, too, would probably oppose taking up the bill on a procedural vote expected as early as Tuesday, meaning a collapse could be imminent.

Ms. Collins wrote on Twitter on Monday evening that she wanted to work with her colleagues from both parties to fix flaws in the Affordable Care Act, but that the budget office’s report showed that the “Senate bill won’t do it.”

The report left Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, with the unenviable choices of changing senators’ stated positions, withdrawing the bill from consideration while he renegotiates, or letting it go down to defeat — a remarkable conclusion to the Republicans’ seven-year push to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement.

The Senate’s bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act is not a healthcare bill. It’s a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, paid for by a dramatic reduction in healthcare funding for approximately 23 million poor, disabled, and working middle class Americans.

America’s wealthiest taxpayers (earning more than $200,000 a year, $250,000 for couples) would get a tax cut totaling $346 billion over 10 years, representing what they save from no longer financing healthcare for lower-income Americans.

That’s not all. The bill would save an additional $400 billion on Medicaid, which Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Donald Trump are intent on shrinking in order to cut even more taxes for the wealthy and for big corporations.

If enacted, it would be the largest single transfer of wealth to the rich from the middle class and poor in American history.

This disgrace is being proposed at a time when the nation’s rich own a higher percentage of the nation’s wealth and receive the highest percent of America’s income since the era of the Robber Barons of the late nineteenth century.

Almost all of the transfer is hidden inside a bill that’s supposed to be a kinder and gentler version of its House counterpart, which Trump called “mean, mean, mean.”

Healthcare activists hold signs during a protest against the Trumpcare bill on June 21, 2017 in San Francisco, California. Dozens of healthcare activists and senior citizens staged a protest outside the San Francisco Federal Building to express their opposition of the American Heathcare Act bill that is being drafted behind closed doors by Republican senators. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

"It's exactly what you'd expect from 13 Republican men and a bunch of lobbyists." —Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)The bill is not yet in its final form and, according to reports, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is still considering input from corporate lobbyists, but the contents released online have already sparked a flood of alarmed criticism, vows of opposition, and protests outside of McConnell's office.

Provides significant room for states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients

Though many Republicans have expressed hesitation about backing a deeply unpopular piece of legislation that would have a devastating impact on many of their constituents, McConnell has remained insistent upon bringing Trumpcare—which Senate Republicans have formally labeled the Better Care Reconciliation Act—to the floor for a vote next week.

Commentators and activists summarized the bill in much the same way they had in the weeks leading up to its release due to the fact that, as the Washington Postnotes, it "largely mirrors the House measure."

Both, if enacted, would rapidly alter the structure of the American healthcare system and increase, by tens of millions, the number of people without insurance.

"Trumpcare doesn't just repeal Obamacare," political analyst Stephen Wolf observed. "It repeals the last 52 years of advances in healthcare policy."

Faiz Shakir, the national political director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), argued in a statement the legislation would "endanger the lives and liberty of many Americans."

Shakir continued:

Heartless! Now we know why Senate Republicans have done everything they can to hide the contents of their health care repeal bill from the American people. By eviscerating Medicaid, this bill threatens the liberty of people with disabilities, who will be forced to live in nursing homes and institutions instead of their own homes. By defunding Planned Parenthood, this bill threatens the health of 2.5 million women and men in our country, many of whom rely on the health centers as their only source of care. And by throwing tens of millions of people off their insurance, this bill disproportionately impacts communities of color who will lose access to care and coverage.

In a blog post on Thursday, Indivisible co-executive directors Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg deemed the bill "cruel" and "ugly," and outlined an action plan for those looking to resist its passage.

"Heartless! Now we know why Senate Republicans have done everything they can to hide the contents of their health care repeal bill from the American people." —Faiz Shakir, ACLU national political director

"We are under no illusions that victory is assured here," they concluded, "but victory is possible."

Democratic lawmakers, who in recent days have responded to grassroots pressure by vowing to forcefully oppose the legislation, were also quick to respond to the plan's release.

Senator has read Republican's bill and says it makes very clear who it aims to serve

"This bill does not represent our values," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). "This bill is not who we are as a country. We believe that health care is a basic human right, and we will get out there and fight for it." (Photo: Screenshot/@SenWarren)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has now read the Republican bill that would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and says that it contains "one flashing neon light after another" that signals who this piece of legislation is designed to serve: the very rich and the very powerful.

"This is blood money," the senator said both on the floor of the Senate on Thursday and in a video posted to social media. "They're paying for tax cuts with American lives."

As critics have noted, the Republican effort to destroy the ACA, also known as Obamacare, should be seen not as an effort to provide better health coverage for Americans but as an opportunity to give the wealthy a major tax cut. Analysis shows that both the House and Senate versions of Trumpcare would strip coverage from millions and would make existing insurance policies worse and more expensive for nearly all Americans.

With massive cuts to Medicaid, the defunding of Planned Parenthood, and the end of vital protections for those with pre-existing conditions—Warren said there is no question about who will be harmed and who will be helped if the Republicans' proposals are not stopped.

"This bill does not represent our values," Warren said. "This bill is not who we are as a country. We believe that healthcare is a basic human right, and we will get out there and fight for it."

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June 22, 2017

The Republicans revealed their till now secretive replacement for Obamacare: Obamacare except less money for the poor. After making a super big deal out of "Repealing and Replacing" Obamacare for years and basing all their political fortunes on that, the best they can come up with is slashing Medicaid and other subsidies for the poor, a lot of them in Rust Belt states, which have faithfully voted for the anger based Republican party which has been helped along with the likes of Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh and Fox news.

Libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, whose vote may be tough for McConnell to get, raised concerns about keeping income-based subsidies. “There’s a great danger, from the point of view of somebody who thought we were repealing Obamacare, that we’re going to actually be replacing Obamacare with Obamacare,” Paul said Wednesday.

Trump will probably tout the plan as "Really great health care. So much better than Obamacare. This is the best ever health care. Really great. We have made health care in America great again." Well, just not for the poor who are losing right and left in the Trump administration, but at least they've vented their anger against Obamacare and now they will have to live with the consequences. I guess there will be no more money for opioid treatment centers.

Republicans are counting on the fact that low information voters will just be too dumb to figure out that they're getting screwed and just take heart that their tribe, the Red State tribe, has done it again, given the finger to all those commy, latte drinking liberals in New York and California.

May 29, 2017

Very soon Senate Republicans will have to decide what to do about Trumpcare. Their choice is severely limited.

The Congressional Budget Office has made it crystal clear that the House version of Trumpcare will cause 23 million Americans to lose their health coverage.

Which means that unless Senate Republicans repudiate their own Congressional Budget Office (whose director they appointed), they’ll have to either vote to take away healthcare for 23 million people, or come up with their own plan.

But if they try to come up with their own plan, they’ll soon discover there’s no way to insure those 23 million without (1) mandating that healthy people buy insurance, so that sick people with pre-existing conditions can afford it; and (2) keeping the existing taxes on rich people so that poor people can afford to buy health insurance.

In other words, they’ll be back to the Affordable Care Act.

Some Senate Republicans will no doubt claim that the Affordable Care Act can’t be sustained in its present form because private insurers are beginning to bail out of it.

That’s an awkward argument for Republicans to make because Republicans themselves have been responsible for this problem.

In 2010 Congress established “risk corridors” to protect insurers against uncertainties in setting the level of insurance premiums when they didn’t know who would sign up. Since then, Republicans have reduced or eliminated this backup. And the Trump Administration has done everything possible to generate even more uncertainty among insurers.

The obvious solution is to restore this backup and reduce uncertainty, in order to attract insurers back in.

This is surely better than repealing the Affordable Care Act and taking away health insurance coverage for 23 million people.

The only alternative is a single-payer plan – Medicare for all – that would provide universal coverage more cheaply than our present system, as embraced by most other advanced nations.

But Senate Republicans won’t get near a single payer.

Which means, as a practical matter, they have no choice. They may wrap it up in different garb and call it by a different name, but in the end the logic is unavoidable: They’ll have to strengthen the Affordable Care Act.

May 22, 2017

The teflon sobriquet was first applied to Ronald Reagan. Recall how he did a whole lot of illegal stuff, but was never impeached. The Iran-Contra affair involved selling arms to Iran and then using the money to fund the contras in Nicaragua. This was strictly forbidden by Congress under the Boland Amendment which had prohibited further funding of the Contras. But Reagan was a popular President so he got away with it without being impeached. President Nixon was not so lucky with his illegal undertakings. The Watergate scandal involved a break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC in 1972. The Nixon administration attempted to cover up its involvement. Nixon would have been impeached and removed from office so he resigned instead, the only President to do so. Evidently, Nixon didn't have the required amount of teflon protecting him.

Trump famously said he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. Yeah, especially if that someone was poor and black. I doubt if he could shoot a rich white guy and get away with it. Trump can shoot his mouth off without any consequences though. He can say whatever he wants whenever he wants and get away with it. I predict there won't be any consequences to the supposed "collusion" between his campaign and the Russians nor will there be any consequences to his firing of my homey, Jim Comey, the former FBI director. After all Republicans control both Houses of Congress. They don't want to get rid of Trump ... yet.

Trump is the Republicans' "useful idiot." He is totally on board with the Republican agenda of tax cuts for the rich and taking away benefits for the poor and middle class. The Washington Post reported on May 21 that there will be cuts to Medicaid in the Trump budget as well as cuts to all the other anti-poverty programs.

President Trump’s first major budget proposal on Tuesday will include massive cuts to Medicaid and call for changes to anti-poverty programs that would give states new power to limit a range of benefits, people familiar with the planning said, despite growing unease in Congress about cutting the safety net.

For Medicaid, the state-federal program that provides health care to low-income Americans, Trump’s budget plan would follow through on a bill passed by House Republicans to cut more than $800 billion over 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that this could cut off Medicaid benefits for about 10 million people over the next decade.

The White House also will call for giving states more flexibility to impose work requirements for people in different kinds of anti-poverty programs, people familiar with the budget plan said, potentially leading to a flood of changes in states led by conservative governors. Many anti-poverty programs have elements that are run by both the states and federal government, and a federal order allowing states to stiffen work requirements “for able-bodied Americans” could have a broad impact in terms of limiting who can access anti-poverty payments — and for how long.

May 07, 2017

Shame on every one of the 217 Republicans who voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, and substitute basically nothing.

Trumpcare isn’t a replacement of the Affordable Care Act. It’s a transfer from the sick and poor to the rich and healthy.

The losers are up to 24 million Americans who under the Affordable Care Act get subsidies to afford health insurance coverage, including millions of people with pre-existing conditions and poor people who had access to Medicaid who may not be able to afford insurance in the future.

The winners are wealthy Americans who will now get a tax cut because they won’t have to pay to fund the Affordable Care Act, and healthy people who won’t have to buy health insurance to subsidize the sick.

House Republicans say they have protected people with pre-existing health problems. Baloney. Sick people could be charged premiums so high as to make insurance unaffordable. Trumpcare would even let states waive the Obamacare ban on charging higher premiums for women who have been raped — which actually occurred before the Affordable Care Act.

America has the only healthcare system in the world designed to avoid sick people. Private for-profit health insurers do whatever they can to insure groups of healthy people, because that’s where the profits are. They also make every effort to avoid sick people, because that’s where the costs are.

The Affordable Care Act puts healthy and sick people into the same insurance pool. But under the Republican bill that passed the House, healthy people will no longer be subsidizing sick people. Healthy people will be in their own insurance pool. Sick people will be grouped with other sick people in their own high-risk pool – which will result in such high premiums, co-payments, and deductibles that many if not most won’t be able to afford.

Republicans say their bill creates a pool of money that will pay insurance companies to cover the higher costs of insuring sick people. Wrong. Insurers will take the money and still charge sick people much higher premiums. Or avoid sick people altogether.

The only better alternative to the Affordable Care Act is a single-payer system, such as Medicare for all, which would put all Americans into the same giant insurance pool. Not only would this be fairer, but it would also be far more efficient, because money wouldn’t be spent marketing and advertising to attract healthy people and avoid sick people.

Paul Ryan says the House vote was about fulfilling a promise the GOP made to American voters. But those voters have been lied to from the start about the Affordable Care Act. For years Republicans told them that the Act couldn’t work, would bankrupt America, and result in millions losing the healthcare they had before. All of these lies have been proven wrong.

Now Republicans say the Act is unsustainable because premiums are rising and insurers are pulling out. Wrong again. Whatever is wrong with the Affordable Care Act could be easily fixed, but Republicans have refused to do the fixing. Insurers have been pulling out because of the uncertainty Republicans have created.

The reason Republicans are so intent on repealing the Affordable Care Act is they want to give a giant tax cut to the rich who’d no longer have to pay the tab.

Here we come to the heart of the matter.

If patriotism means anything, it means sacrificing for the common good, participating in the public good. Childless Americans pay taxes for schools so children are educated. Americans who live close to their work pay taxes for roads and bridges so those who live farther away can get to work. Americans with secure jobs pay into unemployment insurance so those who lose their jobs have some income until they find another.

And under the Affordable Care Act, healthier and wealthier Americans pay a bit more so sicker and poorer Americans don’t die.

Trump and House Republicans aren’t patriots. They don’t believe in sacrificing for the common good. They don’t think we’re citizens with obligations to one another. To them, we’re just individual consumers who deserve the best deal we can get for ourselves. It’s all about the art of the deal.

So what do we do now? We fight.

To become law, Trumpcare has to go through 4 additional steps: First, a version must be enacted in the Senate. It must then go a “conference“ to hammer out differences between the House and Senate. The conference agreement must then pass in the House again, and again in the Senate.

I hope you’ll be there every step of the way, until Trumpcare collapses under the weight of its own cruelty. House Republicans who voted for this travesty will rue the day they did. Any Senate Republican who joins them will regret it as well.

February 11, 2017

In Washington there's such a thing known as the nuclear option which means changing the rules of the Senate to get rid of the filibuster. The Democrats shied away from this during the Obama administration even though Republicans effectively killed or watered down most of Obama's initiatives by means of the filibuster. The Democrats could have changed the rules, but they were too nice, too traditional. Republicans just go for raw power. So now we're at the pass where Trump says “If we end up with that gridlock, I would say, ‘If you can, Mitch, go nuclear,’” He's talking to Mitch McConnell, the Senate leader.

By some obscure procedure the leader of the Senate can rule that the Senate can decide any issue by majority vote, even though the rules of the Senate specify that ending a filibuster requires the consent of 60 senators (out of 100) for legislation, 67 for amending a Senate rule. So it's all about the rules of the Senate which can be changed at any time by the party in power. There's nothing in the Constitution about the filibuster. It's just a traditional thing which the Democrats should have changed during the Obama administration in order to get his progressive agenda implemented. But they didn't. Now Trump and the Repubs are poised to do just that in order to pass their conservative agenda and get their conservative judge on the Supreme Court thus effectively rendering the Democrats impotent.

Trump has nominated Neil M. Gorsuch to fill Antonin Scalia's seat on the Supreme Court. Democrats have proposed a fight as well they should after Republicans refused to allow Obama to appoint the next Supreme Court justice when, according to tradition, it was his right to do so. They kept Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, in limbo indefinitely refusing even to hold a hearing, refusing to even consider him although Scalia's vacancy came up a about a year before the end of Obama's Presidency.

Democrats believe that that seat which will determine whether the majority on the Court is liberal or conservative was stolen from them by hard core Republican tactics. Now Repubs are getting ready to use hard core tactics to install their man, Gorsuch, on the Supreme Court so they can look forward to having a majority conservative Court for decades. Democrats, however, are itching for a full scale showdown. It's about time.

Obama thought that the proper thing to do was to compromise with Republicans over his Obamacare bill and the banking bill, Dodd-Frank. As a result both bills were severely flawed whereas if the Dems had gone for the nuclear option back then, Obama would have had more robust legislation. While Obama had majorities in both Houses during his first two years, Republicans had the filibuster which meant that, instead of 51 votes needed to pass legislation in the Senate, 60 votes were routinely needed because Republicans routinely filibustered everything. The Dems had 60 votes in the Senate for a total of four months during which time Obamacare was passed. Then a Repub, Scott Brown, was elected to fill Tedd Kennedy's seat and the Dems' control of all three branches of government was over.

Repubs Want the Dems to Play Nice and Not Filibuster

Now the Repubs are appealing to Senate custom to get the Dems to go along with Gorsuch's nomination. I say NO WAY. The Dems should fight this with every bone and breath in their collective bodies even if they have to fight for four years until Trump is hopefully kicked out of the White House. There is nothing in the Constitution that says there has to be nine Justices on the Supreme Court. There haven't always been nine justices on the court. The U.S. Constitution established the Supreme Court but left it to Congress to decide how many justices should make up the court. The Judiciary Act of 1789 set the number at six: a chief justice and five associate justices.

So let them get by with eight as they've done for the last year. Scalia died on February 13, 2016. That's about a year ago. Democrats should fight Gorsuch's nomination or else they will have proven that they are a party of wimps. If they let Trump steamroller over them, how could they ever respect themselves again? The Repubs have been playing hard ball for years. Now it's time for the Dems to do so also.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said Judge Gorsuch must meet the 60 vote threshold required to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. Good for him! If the Dems stick to their guns, Gorsuch will never make it to the Supreme Court unless Mitch McConnell goes for the nuclear option which would eliminate the filibuster. Eight Dems would have to join with the Repubs to get Gorsuch past a filibuster. They will never do that.

If Repubs do exercise the nuclear option, Democrats will wish they had a time machine so they could go back eight years and do the same thing in which case they could have gotten some robust progressive legislation passed. But they were too nice and Obama thought he was supposed to compromise with Republicans. Well, they sure didn't think they should compromise with him. And now Trump, who is acting like a dictator, is telling his fellow Repubs to go ahead and use the nuclear option which would effectively make him a full blown dictator.

“The Democrats should treat Trump’s SCOTUS pick with the exact same courtesy the GOP showed Merrick Garland,” Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Mr. Obama, wrote on Twitter. “Don’t flinch, don’t back down.” Yes, and they should do it for four years or even eight years should the most abhorrent thing possible, Trump's reelection, happen.

Repubs Used Filibuster to Block Every Initiative to Help the Middle Class

In President Obama’s July 12 [2014] weekly address he said, “So far this year, Republicans in Congress have blocked every serious idea to strengthen the middle class.” He could have said, “Since 2009.” Since the 2009 “stimulus,” Republicans have obstructed pretty much every effort to help the economy. In the Senate they have filibustered hundreds of bills, and since the “stimulus” they have managed to keep anything from passing that might help the economy.

In the House, Republicans have refused to allow votes on anything that seriously would help the economy, instead passing only tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, spending cuts on essential things like maintaining our infrastructure and scientific research, and cutting regulations that protect people and the environment from being harmed by corporations seeking profit.

Republicans have blocked every effort since the stimulus to maintain infrastructure, hire teachers, raise the minimum wage, give equal pay for women, stop special tax breaks for millionaires and corporations (especially oil companies), stop tax breaks for sending jobs out of the country, provide student loan relief, help the long-term unemployed, and more. Instead they insist on even more tax breaks for oil companies and billionaires, on cutting environmental protections, deregulating oil companies, and so on.

Republicans stymied Obama at every turn for eight years. In particular they filibustered all his infrastructure bills. They filibustered equal pay for women. They filibustered the Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act. They filibustered Student Loan Reform. They filibustered the Buffett Rule which would ensure that millionaires paid a tax comparable to middle class Americans. And on and on. Now they want to eliminate the provision that allowed them to do so so they can go full steam ahead with their agenda. They got down in the gutter and used dirty tactics for eight years with Obama and now they want Democrats to adhere to tradition and play nice with them. Don't you do it Mr. Schumer. It's time for the Democrat Party to grow a pair and show the Repubs just what you are made of. Otherwise, Dictator Trump will trample you into oblivion.

March 06, 2016

So Republicans are going to nominate a candidate who talks complete nonsense on domestic policy; who believes that foreign policy can be conducted via bullying and belligerence; who cynically exploits racial and ethnic hatred for political gain.

But that was always going to happen, however the primary season turned out. The only news is that the candidate in question is probably going to be Donald Trump. Establishment Republicans denounce Mr. Trump as a fraud, which he is. But is he more fraudulent than the establishment trying to stop him? Not really.

Actually, when you look at the people making those denunciations, you have to wonder: Can they really be that lacking in self-awareness?

Donald Trump is a “con artist,” says Marco Rubio — who has promised to enact giant tax cuts, undertake a huge military buildup and balance the budget without any cuts in benefits to Americans over 55.

“There can be no evasion and no games,” thunders Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House — whose much-hyped budgets are completely reliant on “mystery meat,” that is, it claims trillions of dollars in revenue can be collected by closing unspecified tax loopholes and trillions more saved through unspecified spending cuts.

Mr. Ryan also declares that the “party of Lincoln” must “reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry.” Has he ever heard of Nixon’s “Southern strategy”; of Ronald Reagan’s invocations of welfare queens and “strapping young bucks” using food stamps; of Willie Horton?

Put it this way: There’s a reason whites in the Deep South vote something like 90 percent Republican, and it’s not their philosophical attachment to libertarian principles.

Then there’s foreign policy, where Mr. Trump is, if anything, more reasonable — or more accurately, less unreasonable — than his rivals. He’s fine with torture, but who on that side of the aisle isn’t? He’s belligerent, but unlike Mr. Rubio, he isn’t the favorite of the neoconservatives, a.k.a. the people responsible for the Iraq debacle. He’s even said what everyone knows but nobody on the right is supposed to admit, that the Bush administration deliberately misled America into that disastrous war.

Oh, and it’s Ted Cruz, not Mr. Trump, who seems eager to “carpet bomb” people, without appearing to know what that means.

In fact, you have to wonder why, exactly, the Republican establishment is really so horrified by Mr. Trump. Yes, he’s a con man, but they all are. So why is this con job different from any other?

The answer, I’d suggest, is that the establishment’s problem with Mr. Trump isn’t the con he brings; it’s the cons he disrupts.

First, there’s the con Republicans usually manage to pull off in national elections — the one where they pose as a serious, grown-up party honestly trying to grapple with America’s problems. The truth is that that party died a long time ago, that these days it’s voodoo economics and neocon fantasies all the way down. But the establishment wants to preserve the facade, which will be hard if the nominee is someone who refuses to play his part.

By the way, I predict that even if Mr. Trump is the nominee, pundits and others who claim to be thoughtful conservatives will stroke their chins and declare, after a great show of careful deliberation, that he’s the better choice given Hillary’s character flaws, or something. And self-proclaimed centrists will still find a way to claim that the sides are equally bad. But both acts will look especially strained.

Equally important, the Trump phenomenon threatens the con the G.O.P. establishment has been playing on its own base. I’m talking about the bait and switch in which white voters are induced to hate big government by dog whistles about Those People, but actual policies are all about rewarding the donor class.

What Donald Trump has done is tell the base that it doesn’t have to accept the whole package. He promises to make America white again — surely everyone knows that’s the real slogan, right? — while simultaneously promising to protect Social Security and Medicare, and hinting at (though not actually proposing) higher taxes on the rich. Outraged establishment Republicans splutter that he’s not a real conservative, but neither, it turns out, are many of their own voters.

Just to be clear, I find the prospect of a Trump administration terrifying, and so should you. But you should also be terrified by the prospect of a President Rubio, sitting in the White House with his circle of warmongers, or a President Cruz, whom one suspects would love to bring back the Spanish Inquisition.

As I see it, then, we should actually welcome Mr. Trump’s ascent. Yes, he’s a con man, but he is also effectively acting as a whistle-blower on other people’s cons. That is, believe it or not, a step forward in these weird, troubled times.

March 05, 2016

You are the captains of American industry, the titans of Wall Street, and the billionaires who for decades have been the backbone of the Republican Party.

You’ve invested your millions in the GOP in order to get lower taxes, wider tax loopholes, bigger subsidies, more generous bailouts, less regulation, lengthier patents and copyrights and stronger market power allowing you to raise prices, weaker unions and bigger trade deals allowing you outsource abroad to reduce wages, easier bankruptcy for you but harder bankruptcy for homeowners and student debtors, and judges who will let you to engage in insider trading and who won’t prosecute you for white-collar crimes.

All of which have made you enormously wealthy. Congratulations.

But I have some disturbing news for you. You’re paying a big price – and about to pay far more.

First, as you may have noticed, most of your companies aren’t growing nearly as fast as they did before the Great Recession. Your sales are sputtering, and your stock prices are fragile.

That’s because you forgot that your workers are also consumers. As you’ve pushed wages downward, you’ve also squeezed your customers so tight they can hardly afford to buy what you have to sell.

Consumer spending comprises 70 percent of the American economy. But the typical family is earning less today than it did in 2000, in terms of real purchasing power.

Most of the economic gains have gone to you and others like you who spend only a small fraction of what they rake in. That spells trouble for the economy – and for you.

You’ve tried to lift your share prices artificially by borrowing money at low interest rates and using it to buy back your shares of stock. But this party trick works only so long. Besides, interest rates are starting to rise.

Second, you’ve instructed your Republican lackeys to reduce your and your corporation’s taxes so much over the last three decades – while expanding subsidies and bailouts going your way – that the government is running out of money.

That means many of the things you and your businesses rely on government to do – build and maintain highways, bridges, tunnels, and other physical infrastructure; produce high-quality basic research; and provide a continuous supply of well-educated young people – are no longer being done as well as they should. If present trends continue, all will worsen in years to come.

Finally, by squeezing wages and rigging the economic game in your favor, you have invited an unprecedented political backlash – against trade, immigration, globalization, and even against the establishment itself.

The pent-up angers and frustrations of millions of Americans who are working harder than ever yet getting nowhere, and who feel more economically insecure than ever, have finally erupted. American politics has become a cesspool of vitriol.

Republican politicians in particular have descended into the muck of bigotry, hatefulness, and lies. They’re splitting America by race, ethnicity, and religion. The moral authority America once had in the world as a beacon of democracy and common sense is in jeopardy. And that’s not good for you, or your businesses.

Nor is the uncertainty all this is generating. A politics based on resentment can lurch in any direction at almost any time. Yet you and your companies rely on political stability and predictability.

You follow me? You’ve hoisted yourself on your own petard. All that money you invested in Republican Party in order to reap short-term gains is now reaping a whirlwind.

You would have done far better with a smaller share of an economy growing more rapidly because it possessed a strong and growing middle class.

You’d have done far better with a political system less poisoned by your money – and therefore less volatile and polarized, more capable of responding to the needs of average people, less palpably rigged in your favor.

But you were selfish and greedy, and you thought only about your short-term gains.

You forgot the values of a former generation of Republican establishment that witnessed the devastations of the Great Depression and World War II, and who helped build the great post-war American middle class.

That generation did not act mainly out of generosity or social responsibility. They understood, correctly, that broad-based prosperity would be good for them and their businesses over the long term.

So what are you going to do now? Will you help clean up this mess – by taking your money out of politics, restoring our democracy, de-rigging the system, and helping overcome widening inequality of income, wealth, and political power?

November 11, 2015

It was ostensibly a book tour but I wanted to talk with conservative Republicans and Tea Partiers.

I intended to put into practice what I tell my students – that the best way to learn is to talk with people who disagree you. I wanted to learn from red America, and hoped they’d also learn a bit from me (and perhaps also buy my book).

But something odd happened. It turned out that many of the conservative Republicans and Tea Partiers I met agreed with much of what I had to say, and I agreed with them.

For example, most condemned what they called “crony capitalism,” by which they mean big corporations getting sweetheart deals from the government because of lobbying and campaign contributions.

I met with group of small farmers in Missouri who were livid about growth of “factory farms” owned and run by big corporations, that abused land and cattle, damaged the environment, and ultimately harmed consumers.

They claimed giant food processors were using their monopoly power to squeeze the farmers dry, and the government was doing squat about it because of Big Agriculture’s money.

I met in Cincinnati with Republican small-business owners who are still hurting from the bursting of the housing bubble and the bailout of Wall Street.

“Why didn’t underwater homeowners get any help?” one of them asked rhetorically. “Because Wall Street has all the power.” Others nodded in agreement.

In Kansas City I met with Tea Partiers who were angry that hedge-fund managers had wangled their own special “carried interest” tax deal.

“No reason for it,” said one. “They’re not investing a dime of their own money. But they’ve paid off the politicians.”

In Raleigh, I heard from local bankers who thought Bill Clinton should never have repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. “Clinton was in the pockets of Wall Street just like George W. Bush was,” said one.

Most of the people I met in America’s heartland want big money out of politics, and think the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision was shameful.

Most are also dead-set against the Trans Pacific Partnership. In fact, they’re opposed to trade agreements, including NAFTA, that they believe have made it easier for corporations to outsource American jobs abroad.

A surprising number think the economic system is biased in favor of the rich. (That’s consistent with a recent Quinnipiac poll in which 46 percent of Republicans believe “the system favors the wealthy.”)

The more conversations I had, the more I understood the connection between their view of “crony capitalism” and their dislike of government.

They don’t oppose government per se. In fact, as the Pew Research Center has found, more Republicans favor additional spending on Social Security, Medicare, education, and infrastructure than want to cut those programs.

Rather, they see government as the vehicle for big corporations and Wall Street to exert their power in ways that hurt the little guy.

They call themselves Republicans but many of the inhabitants of America’s heartland are populists in the tradition of William Jennings Bryan.

I also began to understand why many of them are attracted to Donald Trump. I had assumed they were attracted by Trump’s blunderbuss and his scapegoating of immigrants.

That’s part of it. But mostly, I think, they see Trump as someone who’ll stand up for them – a countervailing power against the perceived conspiracy of big corporations, Wall Street, and big government.

Trump isn’t saying what the moneyed interests in the GOP want to hear. He’d impose tariffs on American companies that send manufacturing overseas, for example.

November 05, 2015

The Donald just doesn't know how to back up his statement with the actual facts, that's all. Richard Clarke, the CIA's National Coordinator for Counterterrorism, was running around with his hair on fire trying to get George W Bush to listen to him about the imminence of an attack by bin Ladin. Bush blew him off and then demoted him so that he didn't report directly to the President as he had under the Clinton and George H W Bush administrations. Now he had to go through Condoleeza Rice and her deputy who also blew him off. Bush simply was not interested in terrorism; he was only interested in getting the goods on Saddam so he would have some kind of rationale for invading Iraq. He wanted to invade Iraq the worst way so he went about manufacturing evidence that would justify his doing so. In the meantime he totally ignored terrorism and the advice he should have heeded about an imminent attack.

In his memoir, Against All Enemies, Clarke wrote that Condoleezza Rice made a decision that the position of National Coordinator for Counterterrorism should be downgraded. By demoting the office, the Administration sent a signal through the national security bureaucracy about the importance they assigned to terrorism. Instead of Clarke reporting directly to the President, he would now report to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley, and they were hardly interested which reflected their boss's malign neglect.

At the first Deputies Committee meeting on Terrorism held in April 2001, Clarke suggested that the U.S. target bin Laden and his leadership by reinitiating flights of the MQ-1 Predators and take other measures against terrorists. To these suggestions Deputy Secretary of Defense and neocon Paul Wolfowitz responded, "Well, I just don't understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden." Clarke replied that he was talking about bin Laden and al Qaeda because it posed "an immediate and serious threat to the United States." According to Clarke, Wolfowitz turned to him and said, "You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don't exist."

On June 25, Clarke warned Rice and Hadley that six separate intelligence reports showed al Qaeda personnel warning of a pending attack. An Arabic television station reported bin Laden's pleasure with al Qaeda leaders who were saying that the next weeks "will witness important surprises" and that U.S. and Israeli interests will be targeted. Al Qaeda also released a new recruitment and fund-raising tape. Clarke wrote that this was all too sophisticated to be merely a psychological operation to keep the United States on edge, and the CIA agreed. The intelligence reporting consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a calamitous level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil and that they would consist of possible multiple - but not necessarily simultaneous - attacks.

On June 28, Clarke wrote Rice that the pattern of al Qaeda activity indicating attack planning over the past six weeks "had reached a crescendo. A series of new reports continue to convince me and analysts at State, CIA, DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency], and NSA that a major terrorist attack or series of attacks is likely in July," he noted. One al Qaeda intelligence report warned that something "very, very, very, very" big was about to happen, and most of bin Laden's network was reportedly anticipating the attack. In late June, the CIA ordered all its station chiefs to share information on al Qaeda with their host governments and to push for immediate disruptions of cells.

Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States

The headline of a June 30 briefing to top officials was stark: "Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks." The report stated that bin Laden operatives expected near-term attacks to have dramatic consequences of catastrophic proportions. That same day, Saudi Arabia declared its highest level of terror alert. Despite evidence of delays possibly caused by heightened U.S. security, the planning for attacks was continuing.

At a July 5, 2001, White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS, Clarke stated that "something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon."

Clarke wrote that in the summer of 2001, the intelligence community was convinced of an imminent attack by al Qaeda, but could not get the attention of the highest levels of the Bush administration, most famously writing that Director of the CIA George Tenet was running around with his "hair on fire".

On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, al Qaeda. That morning’s “presidential daily brief” — the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the now-infamous heading: Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.The brief warned of terrorism threats from bin Ladin and al Qaeda 36 days before the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The most controversial incident in Against All Enemies deals with the president's eagerness to link the Sept. 11 attacks to Iraq, and comes on the night of Sept. 12. Clarke writes that he saw Bush wandering alone through the Situation Room. The president then stopped and asked Clarke and a few aides to ''go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this.''

Clarke said he was ''taken aback, incredulous.'' He told the president, ''Al Qaeda did this.''

''I know, I know, but . . . see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred. . . .'' After the president left, one of Clarke's aides said, ''Wolfowitz got to him.''

Clarke and his communications with the Bush administration regarding bin Laden and associated terrorist plots targeting the United States were mentioned frequently in Condoleezza Rice's public interview by the 9/11 investigatory commission on April 8, 2004. Of particular significance was a memo from January 25, 2001, that Clarke had authored and sent to her. Along with making an urgent request for a meeting of the National Security Council's Principals Committee to discuss the growing al Qaeda threat in the greater Middle East, the memo also suggests strategies for combating al-Qaeda that might be adopted by the new Bush administration.

Clarke wrote:

Within a week of the inauguration, I wrote to Rice and Hadley asking 'urgently' for a Principals, or Cabinet-level, meeting to review the imminent Al-Qaeda threat. Rice told me that the Principals Committee, which had been the first venue for terrorism policy discussions in the Clinton administration, would not address the issue until it had been 'framed' by the Deputies.

Clarke Testifies "Your Government Failed You"

On March 24, 2004, Clarke testified at the public 9/11 Commission hearings. At the outset of his testimony Clarke offered an apology to the families of 9/11 victims and an acknowledgment that the government had failed: "I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11...To the loved ones of the victims of 9/11, to them who are here in this room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness."

Many of the events Clarke recounted during the hearings were also published in his memoir. Clarke charged that before and during the 9/11 crisis, many in the Administration were distracted from efforts against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization by a pre-occupation with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Clarke had written that on September 12, 2001, President Bush pulled him and a couple of aides aside and "testily" asked him to try to find evidence that Saddam was connected to the terrorist attacks. In response he wrote a report stating there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement and got it signed by all relevant agencies, including the FBI and the CIA. The paper was quickly returned by a deputy with a note saying "Please update and resubmit." After initially denying that such a meeting between the President and Clarke took place, the White House later reversed its denial when others present backed Clarke's version of the events.

Bush blew Clarke off because he was only concerned about "getting the goods" on Saddam. He was reaching for any tidbit of information that would make it feasible for him to invade Iraq. Bush desperately wanted to be a "wartime President" so he totally ignored the threat of terrorism. According to Bush's ghostwriter Mickey Herskowitz, Bush had been obsessing over invading Iraq since 1999. He told Herskowitz, "One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade … if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”

The Donald may be ignorant of the actual history involved here but somehow he has stumbled upon the truth much to the chagrin of Jeb Bush, his erstwhile adversary in the Republican circus of primary politics. Furthermore, the Donald may actually be right about two things: he's with Bernie on taxing the hedge fund managers and their despicable tax dodge called "carried interest."

How energy coordination on one continent could bring the planet to its knees

It’s a ritual long familiar to observers of American politics: presidential hopefuls with limited international experience travel to foreign lands and deliver speeches designed to showcase their grasp of foreign affairs. Typically, such escapades involve trips to major European capitals or active war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, however, has broken this mold. Before his recent jaunt to London and into the thickets of American vaccination politics, he chose two surprising destinations for his first trips abroad as a potential Republican candidate. No, not Kabul or Baghdad or even Paris, but Mexico City and Alberta, Canada. And rather than launch into discussions of immigration, terrorism, or the other usual Republican foreign policy topics, he focused on his own top priority: integrating Canada and Mexico into a U.S.-led “North American energy renaissance.”

By accelerating the exploitation of fossil fuels across the continent, reducing governmental oversight of drilling operations in all three countries, and building more cross-border pipelines like the Keystone XL, Christie explained, all three countries would be guaranteed dramatic economic growth. “In North America, we have resources waiting to be tapped,” he assured business leaders in Mexico City. “What is required is the vision to maximize our growth, the political will to unlock our potential, and the understanding that working together on strategic priorities... is the path to a better life.”

At first glance, Christie’s blueprint for his North American energy renaissance seems to be a familiar enough amalgam of common Republican tropes: support for that Keystone XL pipeline slated to bring Canadian tar sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast, along with unbridled energy production everywhere; opposition to excessive governmental regulation; free trade… well, you know the mantra. But don’t be fooled. Something far grander -- and more sinister -- is being proposed. It’s nothing less than a plan to convert Canada and Mexico into energy colonies of the United States, while creating a North American power bloc capable of aggressively taking on Russia, China, and other foreign challengers.

This outlook -- call it North Americanism -- is hardly unique to Christie. It pervades the thinking of top Republican leaders and puts their otherwise almost inexplicably ardent support of Keystone XL in a new light. As most analysts now concede, that pipeline will do little to generate long-term jobs or promote U.S. energy independence. (Much of the tar sands oil it’s designed to carry will be refined in the U.S., but exported elsewhere). In fact, with oil prices plunging globally, it looks ever more like a white elephant of a project, yet it remains the Republican majority’s top legislative priority. The reason: it is the concrete manifestation of Christie-style North American energy integration, and for that reason is considered sacred by Republican proponents of North Americanism. “This is not about sending ‘your oil’ across ‘our land,’” Christie insisted in Calgary. “It’s about maximizing the benefits of North America’s natural resources for everybody.”

While North American energy integration may, in part, appeal to Republicans for the way it would enrich major U.S. oil companies, pipeline firms, and some energy-industry workers -- the “everybody” in Christie’s remarks -- its real allure lies in the way they believe it will buttress the more hawkish and militarized foreign policy that so many in the GOP now favor. By boosting fossil fuel production in North America, Keystone’s backers claim, the U.S. will be less dependent on imports from the Middle East and so in a stronger position to combat Russia, Iran, ISIS, and other foreign challengers.

Authorization for Keystone XL and related energy infrastructure is important “not just for economic development, not just for jobs and growth,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas declared in January, “but also for the enormous geopolitical advantages that it will present to the United States [by strengthening] our hands against those who would be enemies of America.”

Brace yourself. This combination of fossil fuel optimization and North American solidarity against a potentially hostile world is destined to become the core of the Republican economic and national security platforms in the 2016 presidential election. It will similarly govern action in Congress over the next two years. So, if you want to understand the dynamics of contemporary American politics, it’s crucial to grasp the new Republican vision of an energy-saturated North America.

Exxon’s Neo-Imperial Vision

Republican-style North Americanism is, in fact, an amalgam of two intersecting urges. The first of them involves a quest by U.S.-based giant oil companies to gain greater access to the oil and natural gas reserves of Canada and Mexico; the second, a drive by neoconservatives and national security hawks in Washington to rev up Cold War 2.0, while stepping up combat with both Iran and the Islamic State.

Let’s start with the altered world energy order once dominated by privately owned giants like BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil -- a.k.a. the international oil companies, or IOCs. For most of the twentieth century, these companies controlled a majority of the world’s oil and gas reserves and so almost completely dominated the global trade in hydrocarbons. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, many of their overseas assets were systematically appropriated by governments in oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Venezuela, and placed under the control of state-owned, national oil companies, or NOCs. In response, the IOCs sought to increase their production from reserves in Canada and the U.S., as well as in Mexico, which has its own state-owned oil company but was facing declining output. This led those big companies to believe that, in the long run, Mexico would be forced to open its doors to greater foreign involvement.

Their strategy proved widely successful in the U.S., where the application of new technologies, including hydro-fracking, horizontal drilling, and deepwater drilling, has led to spectacular increases in oil and gas output. According to the Energy Information Administration of the Department of Energy, U.S. field production of crude oil jumped from five million barrels per day in 2008 to 8.6 million barrels in the third quarter of 2014. Over the same period, the production of natural gas similarly rose from 21.1 to 25.7 trillion cubic feet. The current plunge in oil prices is expected to slow the pace of U.S. drilling, but not prevent further gains.

Stepped-up investment by the big energy companies led to a comparable increase in production from Canada’s tar sands (also called oil sands). According to BP, Canadian crude output climbed from 3.2 million barrels per day in 2008 to nearly 4.0 million barrels by the end of 2013, thanks purely to those tar sands. But the producers of all this added oil have run into a major obstacle to its successful commercialization: there are not enough pipelines to transport this particularly carbon-dense crude to refineries in the United States, where it can be processed into usable petroleum products. Hence, the need for additional pipelines, beginning with Keystone XL. Indeed, with the recent fall in oil prices, Keystone has become even more important, as other modes of transport, including delivery by rail, are far more costly.

Mexico presents a different set of obstacles. Under the Mexican Constitution, all hydrocarbon deposits are the property of the Mexican people and their exploitation is reserved solely for the state-owned company, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex). The country’s expropriation of foreign oil assets on March 18, 1937, is considered a pillar of Mexican sovereignty and that day is still celebrated as a national holiday (Día de la Expropiación Petrolera). As a result, the only way the giant oil companies could gain access to Mexico’s vast reserves of oil and gas would be if its leaders were willing to amend existing laws to allow the involvement of foreign firms in the development of these assets.

In response to such obstacles, the major U.S.-based oil companies and their financial backers have developed a strategy to promote North American energy interdependence, while stressing the beneficial value of increased U.S. participation in Canada’s and Mexico’s energy industries and the elimination of barriers to cross-border pipelines and other transnational energy infrastructure.

Although oil company executives have rarely discussed such strategic planning in public, there was an exception. In 2012, before the Council on Foreign Relations, Rex Tillerson, chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, gave its North American strategy an unusually candid airing. “Canada has a huge resource endowment,” he noted. “The United States has a huge resource endowment; Mexico has a huge resource endowment.” In that light, he suggested that the major U.S. energy firms coordinate the full-scale exploitation of all three countries’ fossil fuels. “[If] we approach energy policy and energy security from a North American perspective, the resource base, the technologies that are available, and the like-minded policies that could be put in place could rapidly achieve that energy security that we have been in quest of for all of my career.”

Canada and the U.S., he pointed out then, were already moving to embrace such “like-minded policies,” but Mexico still had a long way to go. “We’re hopeful,” he added, “that Mexico, as it continues its pathway to reforms around how it manages its own oil and natural gas resources... will open up opportunities for greater partnerships and collaborations [while] bringing technology to bear on the huge resources that Mexico has as well.”

The task, then, was simply to persuade the leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. to harmonize their energy policies. As Tillerson explained, “It’s my hope that at some point energy security can become a policy issue in our foreign policy discussions with Mexico, Canada, and the United States.” In this Big Oil view of how North America should work lay the foundations for the new Republican strategic vision that Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, and other presidential candidates for 2016 are going to turn into an overarching political mantra.

The New Cold War

Now, imagine a second river of energy exuberance flowing into Big Oil’s strategic vision. This would be the reinvigorated Cold War stance of Republican hawks and neocons. Led by Senator John McCain (now chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee), these advocates for an ever more aggressive foreign/military policy are pushing the idea that a series of foreign adversaries -- Russia, China, Iran, and Islamic terrorists -- are ratcheting up the dangers for this country and that the Obama administration’s response is woefully feeble.

The president’s failure to effectively resist belligerent moves by Russia in the Crimea and Ukraine, McCain argues, has “fed a perception that the United States is weak,” and for figures like Russian President Vladimir Putin, “vacillation invites aggression.” Not only has the president’s claimed policy weakness invited further assaults from Russia in Eurasia, but it has also “emboldened other aggressive actors -- from Chinese nationalists to al-Qaeda terrorists and Iranian theocrats.”

As McCain, other Senate and House war hawks, and their neocon allies see it, there is only one appropriate response to such threats: a vigorous counterattack, involving beefed-up support for NATO, copious arms deliveries to the Ukrainians, and increased defense expenditures at home. “When aggressive rulers or violent fanatics threaten our ideals [and] our interests,” McCain typically asserted last November, the country needs “not good intentions, or strong words, or a grand coalition, [but] the capability, credibility, and global reach of American hard power.”

While “hard power” may be the preferred response of such hawks, most do recognize that the direct use of military force by the United States in Ukraine and a number of other places is unlikely, even under a future Republican administration. Public fatigue over American wars in the Greater Middle East coupled with mounting budget woes and a lack of support from Washington’s allies rules out such moves. This means another powerful form of pressure is needed -- and here’s where energy enters the picture.

As McCain and his allies see it, an energy-based North Americanism could prove to be an effective tool in the new Cold War. Noting that many of Washington’s NATO allies are heavily dependent on Russian natural gas and so -- it is claimed -- vulnerable to future political pressure from Moscow, they are, for instance, promoting the production of ever more natural gas via hydro-fracking to ship off to Europe in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG). This, they insist, should be one of the country’s top future priorities. “Today, the U.S. has the leverage to liberate our allies from Russia’s stranglehold on the European natural gas market,” McCain and fellow Republican Senator John Hoeven wrote in July. All that is needed, they insist, is to eliminate government obstacles to drilling on federal lands and the approval of the construction of additional LNG export facilities.

The Republican Grand Strategy

This approach has been embraced by other senior Republican figures who see increased North American hydrocarbon output as the ideal response to Russian assertiveness. In other words, the two pillars of a new energy North Americanism -- enhanced collaboration with the big oil companies across the continent and reinvigorated Cold Warism -- are now being folded into a single Republican grand strategy. Nothing will prepare the West better to fight Russia or just about any other hostile power on the planet than the conversion of North America into a bastion of fossil fuel abundance.

This strange, chilling vision of an American (and global) future was succinctly described by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a remarkable Washington Post op-ed in March 2014. She essentially called for North America to flood the global energy market, causing a plunge in oil prices and bankrupting the Russians. “Putin is playing for the long haul, cleverly exploiting every opening he sees,” she wrote, but “Moscow is not immune from pressure.” Putin and Co. require high oil and gas prices to finance their aggressive activities, “and soon, North America’s bounty of oil and gas will swamp Moscow’s capacity.” By “authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline and championing natural gas exports,” she asserted, Washington would signal “that we intend to do exactly that.”

So now you know: approval of the Keystone XL pipeline isn’t actually about jobs and the economy; it’s about battling Vladimir Putin, the Iranian mullahs, and America’s other adversaries. “One of the ways we fight back, one of the ways we push back is we take control of our own energy destiny,” said Senator Hoeven on January 7th, when introducing legislation to authorize construction of that pipeline.

And that, it turns out, is just the beginning of the “benefits” that North Americanism will supposedly bring. Ultimately, the goals of this strategy are to perpetuate the dominance of fossil fuels in North America’s energy mix and to enlist Canada and Mexico in a U.S.-led drive to ensure the continued dominance of the West in key regions of the world. Stay tuned: you’ll be hearing a lot more about this ambitious strategy as the Republican presidential hopefuls begin making their campaign rounds.

Keep in mind, though, that this is potentially dangerous stuff at every level -- from the urge to ratchet up a conflict with Russia to the desire to produce and consume ever more North American fossil fuels (not exactly a surprising impulse given the Republicans’ heavy reliance on campaign contributions from Big Energy). In the coming months, the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s camp will, of course, attempt to counter this drive. Their efforts will, however, be undermined by their sympathy for many of its components. Obama, for instance, has boasted more than once of his success in increasing U.S. oil and gas production, while Clinton has repeatedly called for a more combative foreign policy. Nor has either of them yet come up with a grand strategy as seemingly broad and attractive as Republican North Americanism. If that plan is to be taken on seriously as the dangerous contrivance it is, it evidently will fall to others to do so.

This Republican vision, after all, rests on the desire of giant oil companies to eliminate government regulation and bring the energy industries of Canada and Mexico under their corporate sway. Were this to happen, it would sabotage efforts to curb carbon emissions from fossil fuels in a major way, while undermining the sovereignty of Canada and Mexico. In the process, the natural environment would suffer horribly as regulatory constraints against hazardous drilling practices would be eroded in all three countries. Stepped-up drilling, hydrofracking, and tar sands production would also result in the increased diversion of water to energy production, reducing supplies for farming while increasing the risk that leaking drilling fluids will contaminate drinking water and aquifers.

No less worrisome, the Republican strategy would result in a far more polarized and dangerous international environment, in which hopes for achieving any kind of peace in Ukraine, Syria, or elsewhere would disappear. The urge to convert North America into a unified garrison state under U.S. (energy) command would undoubtedly prompt similar initiatives abroad, with China moving ever closer to Russia and other blocs forming elsewhere.

In addition, those who seek to use energy as a tool of coercion should not be surprised to discover that they are inviting its use by hostile parties -- and in such conflicts the U.S. and its allies would not emerge unscathed. In other words, the shining Republican vision of a North American energy fortress will, in reality, prove to be a nightmare of environmental degradation and global conflict. Unfortunately, this may not be obvious by election season 2016, so watch out.

January 02, 2015

According to reports, one of the first acts of the Republican congress will be to fire Doug Elmendorf, current director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, because he won’t use “dynamic scoring” for his economic projections.

Dynamic scoring is the magical-mystery math Republicans have been pushing since they came up with supply-side “trickle-down” economics.

It’s based on the belief that cutting taxes unleashes economic growth and thereby produces additional government revenue. Supposedly the added revenue more than makes up for what’s lost when Congress hands out the tax cuts.

Dynamic scoring would make it easier to enact tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, because the tax cuts wouldn’t look as if they increased the budget deficit.

Incoming House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) calls it “reality-based scoring,” but it’s actually magical scoring – which is why Elmendorf, as well as all previous CBO directors have rejected it.

Few economic theories have been as thoroughly tested in the real world as supply-side economics, and so notoriously failed.

Ronald Reagan cut the top income tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent and ended up nearly doubling the national debt. His first budget director, David Stockman, later confessed he dealt with embarrassing questions about future deficits with “magic asterisks” in the budgets submitted to Congress. The Congressional Budget Office didn’t buy them.

George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus from Bill Clinton but then slashed taxes, mostly on the rich. The CBO found that the Bush tax cuts reduced revenues by $3 trillion.

Yet Republicans don’t want to admit supply-side economics is hokum. As a result, they’ve never had much love for the truth-tellers at the Congressional Budget Office.

In 2011, when briefly leading the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich called the CBO “a reactionary socialist institution which does not believe in economic growth, does not believe in innovation and does not believe in data that has not been internally generated.”

The CBO has continued to be a truth-telling thorn in the Republican’s side.

The budget plan Paul Ryan came up with in 2012 – likely to be a harbinger of what’s to come from the Republican congress – slashed Medicaid, cut taxes on the rich and on corporations, and replaced Medicare with a less well-funded voucher plan.

Ryan claimed these measures would reduce the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office disagreed.

Ryan persevered. His 2013 and 2014 budget proposals were similarly filled with magic asterisks. The CBO still wasn’t impressed.

Yet it’s one thing to cling to magical-mystery thinking when you have only one house of Congress. It’s another when you’re running the whole shebang.

Now that Elmendorf is on the way out, presumably to be replaced by someone willing to tell Ryan and other Republicans what they’d like to hear, the way has been cleared for all the magic they can muster.

In this as in other domains of public policy, Republicans have not shown a particular affinity for facts.

Climate change? It’s not happening, they say. And even if it is happening, humans aren’t responsible. (Almost all scientists studying the issue find it’s occurring and humans are the major cause.)

Widening inequality? Not occurring, they say. Even though the data show otherwise, they claim the measurements are wrong.

Voting fraud? Happening all over the country, they say, which is why voter IDs and other limits on voting are necessary. Even though there’s no evidence to back up their claim (the best evidence shows no more than 31 credible incidents of fraud out of a billion ballots cast), they continue to assert it.

Evolution? Just a theory, they say. Even though all reputable scientists support it, many Republicans at the state level say it shouldn’t be taught without also presenting the view found in the Bible.

Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? America’s use of torture? The George W. Bush administration and its allies in Congress weren’t overly interested in the facts.

The pattern seems to be: if you don’t like the facts, make them up.

Or have your benefactors finance “think tanks” filled with hired guns who will tell the public what you and your patrons want them to say.

If all else fails, fire your own experts who tell the truth, and replace them with people who will pronounce falsehoods.

There’s one big problem with this strategy, though. Legislation based on lies often causes the public to be harmed.

Not even “truthiness,” as Stephen Colbert once called it, is an adequate substitute for the whole truth.

November 16, 2014

The President blames himself for the Democrat’s big losses Election Day. “We have not been successful in going out there and letting people know what it is that we’re trying to do and why this is the right direction,” he said Sunday.

In other words, he didn’t sufficiently tout the Administration’s accomplishments.

I respectfully disagree.

If you want a single reason for why Democrats lost big on Election Day 2014 it’s this: Median household income continues to drop. This is the first “recovery” in memory when this has happened.

Jobs are coming back but wages aren’t. Every month the job numbers grow but the wage numbers go nowhere.

Most new jobs are in part-time or low-paying positions. They pay less than the jobs lost in the Great Recession.

This wageless recovery has been made all the worse because pay is less predictable than ever. Most Americans don’t know what they’ll be earning next year or even next month. Two-thirds are now living paycheck to paycheck.

So why is this called a “recovery” at all? Because, technically, the economy is growing. But almost all the gains from that growth are going to a small minority at the top.

In fact, 100 percent of the gains have gone to the best-off 10 percent. Ninety-five percent have gone to the top 1 percent.

The stock market has boomed. Corporate profits are through the roof. CEO pay, in the stratosphere. Yet most Americans feel like they’re still in a recession.

And they’re convinced the game is rigged against them.

Fifty years ago, just 29 percent of voters believed government is “run by a few big interests looking out for themselves.” Now, 79 percent think so.

According to Pew, the percentage of Americans who believe most people who want to get ahead can do so through hard work has plummeted 14 points since 2000.

What the President and other Democrats failed to communicate wasn’t their accomplishments. It was their understanding that the economy is failing most Americans and big money is overrunning our democracy.

And they failed to convey their commitment to an economy and a democracy that serve the vast majority rather than a minority at the top.

Some Democrats even ran on not being Barack Obama. That’s no way to win. Americans want someone fighting for them, not running away from the President.

The midterm elections should have been about jobs and wages, and how to reform a system where nearly all the gains go to the top. It was an opportunity for Democrats to shine. Instead, they hid.

Consider that in four “red” states — South Dakota, Arkansas, Alaska, and Nebraska — the same voters who sent Republicans to the Senate voted by wide margins to raise their state’s minimum wage. Democratic candidates in these states barely mentioned the minimum wage.

So what now?

Republicans, soon to be in charge of Congress, will push their same old supply-side, trickle-down, austerity economics.

They’ll want policies that further enrich those who are already rich. That lower taxes on big corporations and deliver trade agreements written in secret by big corporations. That further water down Wall Street regulations so the big banks can become even bigger – too big to fail, or jail, or curtail.

They’ll exploit the public’s prevailing cynicism by delivering just what the cynics expect.

And the Democrats? They have a choice.

They can refill their campaign coffers for 2016 by trying to raise even more money from big corporations, Wall Street, and wealthy individuals. And hold their tongues about the economic slide of the majority, and the drowning of our democracy.

Or they can come out swinging. Not just for a higher minimum wage but also for better schools, paid family and medical leave, and child care for working families.

For resurrecting the Glass-Steagall Act and limiting the size of Wall Street banks.

For saving Social Security by lifting the cap on income subject to payroll taxes.

For rebuilding the nation’s roads, bridges, and ports.

For increasing taxes on corporations with high ratios of CEO pay to the pay of average workers.

And for getting big money out of politics, and thereby saving our democracy.

September 04, 2014

San Diego's Mayor Kevin Faulconer recently signed a deal with Illumina Corporation that was supposedly designed to keep the corporation from jumping ship and landing in another state or jurisdiction. The City of San Diego agreed to rebate $1.5 million in sales and use taxes. In return Illumina promised to keep a number of jobs in San Diego for the term of the agreement. With revenue of just over $1 billion last year, Illumina sells machines that sequence the human genome. The company leases 6 buildings in San Diego totaling over 560,000 sq. ft. and currently has 1500 employees.

Illumina likes to brag about itself as being the "Apple of the genomics industry." It wrote to its shareholders in 2012:

“Illumina is like the Apple of the genomics business. Tools made by the San Diego company are revered by genomics researchers around the world just like millions of consumers love their iPhones and iPads. And Illumina holds its dominant position at an enviable moment in history, as we’re heading into a scientific golden age when human genomes will be sequenced for $1,000 or less.” – Xconomy reporter Luke Timmerman, March 6, 2012

MIT has called it the "World’s Smartest Company" ahead of Tesla Motors, Google and Samsung.

But the deal the City has entered into with Illumina is fishy on several levels. For starters in 2007 GenomeWeb News reported that Illumina signed a fifteen year lease for a new 84,000-square-foot facility currently under construction in San Diego that will enable it to expand its laboratory and office workforce. BioMed Realty Trust, a real estate investment company focused on the life sciences industries, said the new facility will expand an existing 110,000-square-foot facility that Illumina leases at the University Towne Center. Furthermore, Illumina said it had added a 15-year extension to the lease on the existing property. The new facility will allow for the creation of as many as 1,200 new jobs in the San Diego area, according to BioMed.

A fifteen year lease on new and existing buildings signed in 2007? The lease will be up in 2022. It doesn't sound like Illumina has plans to abandon San Diego any time soon. Meanwhile, the Mayor signs a ten year deal that would keep Illumina here till 2024. So for $1.5 million the City gets two more years of Illumina's commitment to San Diego. But wait there's more. The ten year deal is not really a ten year deal. Sound fishy? Read on.

And then there's the shady reports about Illumina being lured away by Memphis, Tennesee or Poway. Poway?? Good God, does the City of San Diego really have to spend $1.5 million to prevent a company from moving to Poway? For those of you who don't know, Poway is located next door to San Diego in San Diego County. It's part of the San Diego Greater Metropolitan area, for Pete's sake. And those mysterious rumors of a move to Memphis. Problem is sources in Memphis don't know anything about it.

Media reports on the "historic" deal—as Council President Todd Gloria described it—suggested that the cities most aggressively seeking favor with Illumina's allure were Poway and Memphis.

This was news to some pretty smart folks in Poway and Memphis.

"That really surprises me, because we've never been in contact with the company," Poway Mayor Don Higginson told Spin. "I checked with our economic-development director, and he said we were never approached by them."

Mark Cafferty, president and CEO of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp.— a key organizational player in reaching the Illumina agreement — suggested that Memphis was the big player here in luring Illumina away. Au contraire, said Reid Dulberger, head of economic development for the Memphis area. He'd never heard of such a thing. Asked if the offer suggested by Mark Cafferty was in the ballpark, he replied, "There is no ballpark."

Similarly, representatives of the Memphis Chamber of Commerce and Mayor's office knew nothing about any courtship involving Illumina. It seems like this courtship of Illumina by outside jurisdictions was a fig newton of Mark Cafferty's imagination. After all a CEO of an Economic Development Corporation has to do something to earn his pay. Why not gin up a $1.5 million tax giveaway to some leading corporation which by the way Illumina doesn't really need. They are quite profitable thank you very much.

Local news NBC 7 San Diego reported that "the deal" was announced on July 15, 2014: "Under the 10-year agreement, Illumina will keep 300 middle-class manufacturing jobs in San Diego and receive a tax break up to $1.5 million." First of all the "10-year agreement" implies that those 300 middle class jobs will stay in San Diego for 10 years. Not true. Under terms of the agreement the deal could end much sooner if certain conditions are met. But remember that figure "300 middle class jobs." As we shall show, that is a blatant untruth and misrepresentation of the facts.

Illumina has 1500 employees in San Diego. So retaining 300 middle class jobs is a pittance at best compared to its total San Diego employment. And then remember those 1200 additional jobs that Illumina's expansion at University Towne Center, for which they signed a 15 year lease, allowed for the creation of? That's 2700 jobs in San Diego at present and in the near future, but the Mayor gave away $1.5 million of taxpayers' money to retain a paltry 11% of those jobs. And as we shall show, it's even less than 11%. Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, but Faulconer sold out the taxpayers for a mess of BS.

And then there's the tax rebate deal itself. When scrutinized in the harsh light of day, it has aspects which haven't been made apparent in reports the media has made to the general public. First of all it's not a $1.5 million deal. It's a $1.5 million deal with interest. Witness this exchange on KPBS:

MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: That is up to $1.5 million, is that right?

ALMIS UDRYS: That is correct, $1.5 million with interest as well, over the time while they are claiming the rebate, interest would be accrued as well. In the end it would be over $1.5 million.

So the "tax break up to $1.5 million." Not true either. Illumina will get $1.5 million plus 3% interest, and the payout will be in one lump sum which maximizes the interest.

By the way Almis Udrys also noted that this is the third incentive deal that the city has signed off on this year: "Two of them were craft breweries, Ale Smith and Ballast Point, earlier in the year..."

And then there's the matter of how the $1.5 million is rebated to Illumina. It is rebated out of taxes that Illumina expects to pay in the future above and beyond what they are paying now plus 30%. Illumina is expected to grow, have more sales, pay more sales tax and have even more employees than it has now. So they would go on paying the amount of taxes they paid last year (the benchmark year) plus 30%. Any sales tax above that would be rebated once the $1.5 million is reached. A fine detail is that the 30% only applies to sales tax; use tax rebates would be 100% above those paid in the benchmark year.

So last year Illumina paid about $1.3 million in taxes. Since the rebate amount must sit in city coffers until it totals $1.5 million to be paid out in one lump sum, it will accrue interest until Illumina decides to ask the city for a check. When the full $1.5 million has been received by Illumina (plus interest) or 10 years has elapsed, the deal will be terminated. That means that, if Illumina's sales skyrocket, those 300 jobs it promised to keep in San Diego could evaporate in just a few years not the 10 years the media has reported. And since Illumina is heading into a "scientific golden age" for human genome sequencing, they do expect their sales to skyrocket.

Illumina is adding 1200 jobs almost doubling its workforce. Therefore, it is a reasonable guesstimate that it expects to double its sales. Doubling its sales doubles its sales tax. So next year or the year thereafter Illumina could be paying $2.6 million in taxes which would put it at or near the $1.5 million rebate level. The point is that in just a couple years Illumina could have satisfied conditions for the rebate, taken the $1.5 million and left town except for the fact of those 15 year leases. Oh well, they could leave at least by 2022 so that the 10 year deal to save 300 jobs would be moot.

The rationale is that keeping Illumina here keeps the sales and use taxes coming at least at the present rate plus the employees that it keeps here pay sales tax and other taxes themselves and generate up to three ancillary jobs. Of course, Illumina could move about 90% of its employees to another state immediately. The deal with the city doesn't constrain them from doing that.

Moreover, Alan Gin noted in the same KPBS interview that this sort of tax giveaway "will then impact the level of services that can be provided, spent on infrastructure, and other things." That's $1.5 million plus that won't be spent on parks, libraries, schools, repairing potholes, replacing watermains and improving neighborhoods. Remember K-Faulc's mantra: “There is no such thing as a Democratic or Republican pothole.” Whoops, I guess those Democratic potholes won't get fixed after all.

A Times investigation has examined and tallied thousands of local incentives granted nationwide and has found that states, counties and cities are giving up more than $80 billion each year to companies. The beneficiaries come from virtually every corner of the corporate world, encompassing oil and coal conglomerates, technology and entertainment companies, banks and big-box retail chains.

City Council's Approval a Mere Afterthought

So did Illumina shake down the city and threaten to move elsewhere if they didn't get their spif? Not at all. The tax giveaway was initiated by Kevin Faulconer's team itself with a little help from the folks at San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. which gave the mayor's office the heads up. It seems that the city undertook to shake itself down.

On July 21 the City Council took up the Economic Development Incentive Agreement (EDIA) with Illumina, Inc., to provide a sales and use tax rebate. On the Council Docket was the following item description:

Authorize the Mayor to enter into an Economic Development Incentive Agreement with Illumina, Inc., to provide a sales and use tax rebate to encourage this company to retain its manufacturing operations and its taxable product sales operations with the City of San Diego.

From an email inquiry to the members of the City Council, I received this reply from Councilmember Lorie Zapf's office:

Yes, the City Council approved the Illumina deal. It came before Council twice; the first time was on July 21, 2014 and all members were present. The second time was also unanimous on August 7, with Councilmembers Kersey and Emerald absent.

However, according to the docket, it was noted that this item was pursuant to Section 99 of the City Charter (10 day published notice, approval by Ordinance and 6 votes required). There was no mention that the item was voted on at all on July 21. And remember the Mayor had already signed the agreement on July 15!

NOTE: If some of the subsequent links generate a "File or Directory Not Found" message, click here and then scroll down and click on

Illumina would be obligated to retain all of its manufacturing jobs within the City, at any site of its choice, during the term of the EDIA. The term of the EDIA would be the lesser of 10 years or the year that Illumina has generated new additional (above the benchmark) sales and use tax revenues of $1.5 million.

This is interesting for two reasons: (1) Illumina is not required to maintain jobs in the City for ten years as reported in the media but for "the lesser of 10 years or the year that Illumina has generated new additional ... sales and use tax revenues of $1.5 million" and (2) Illumina would not be required to maintain 300 jobs in the City but "all of its manufacturing jobs within the City."

Under the item Community Participation and Public Outreach Efforts it was noted: "None - Confidential municipality-taxpayer negotiations" So the inner workings of the City in this regard are meant to be shrouded in secrecy.

Jay Flatley, CEO of Illumina, signed the Economic Development Incentive Agreement with the City on July 7 long before the City Council "approved" it. The agreement specified the following:

Job Creation and Retention. During the Term of this Agreement, Company shall (i) create or retain all manufacturing jobs existing in the City of San Diego as of the Execution Date; and (ii) make commercially reasonable efforts to create Sales Force jobs, or retain at least the same number of Sales Force Jobs, located in the City of San Diego as of the Execution Date.

The exact number of those manufacturing jobs is not mentioned nor is it specified what a "commercially reasonable effort" is. This would probably not hold water in a court of law.

On July 10, the following document was ready for Mayor Kevin's signature: "AN ORDINANCE OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SAN DIEGO AUTHORIZING THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT WITH ILLUMINA, INC. AND APPROVING CERTAIN RELATED ACTIONS." approved by City Attorney Jan Goldsmith. This document contains a lot of legalese in the form of Whereas this and Whereas that followed by Therefore, Be It Ordained blah, blah, blah. However, one of the Whereases is particularly, well, illuminating:

"WHEREAS, Illumina is committing to create or retain over 100 middle-wage manufacturing job opportunities within San Diego, jobs which are likely to be filled by San Diego residents"

Wait a minute, the legal agreement specifies only 100 manufacturing jobs as opposed to the 300 manufacturing jobs widely reported by the media?! You mean to tell me that this $1.5 million rebate was created to retain 100 jobs in San Diego for what might turn out to be far less than the ten years reported in the media? And that's 100 jobs out of approximately 2700 jobs that Illumina expects shortly to have? Or approximately 1% of its jobs?

The City and its taxpayers have been hoodwinked.

On July 8 David Graham, Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Neighborhood Services, sent a Memorandum to City Council President Todd Gloria with a Direct Docketing Request which consisted of urging the City Council to go ahead and approve the Economic Development Incentive Agreement that Jay Flatley had already signed. It noted: "A proposal for an EDIA would normally be considered by the Council Committee on Economic Development and Intergovernmental Relations (ED&IR) prior to consideration by the full City Council." But Graham wanted it ramrodded through the City Council without further consideration because after all the details had already been worked out and it had already been signed by Flatley. It was awaiting Faulconer's signature as soon as the City Council complied.

The City Council did not give final approval to the Illumina deal until August 7 no doubt because of that Section 99 of the City Charter that required a 10 day waiting period. In any event the deal had already been done, and the City Council's "approval" was after the fact. Faulconer's deal with Illumina was a fait accompli.

Jumping the gun on the City Council's approval, on July 15 Mayor Kevin Faulconer put out a press release:

Agreement with Illumina Inc. will keep hundreds of high wage jobs in the city

San Diego, CA – Today Mayor Kevin L. Faulconer joined Illumina Inc. CEO Jay Flatley to announce an agreement that will keep the medical device company and its good-paying jobs in San Diego. Illumina was recently named "World’s Smartest Company" by the MIT Technology Review, ahead of Tesla Motors, Google and Samsung.

The City will provide a tax rebate in exchange for Illumina retaining approximately 300 middle-class manufacturing jobs in San Diego.

So did the City Council merely ratify a deal on August 7 that had already been consummated on July 15? And the retention of 300 middle-class manufacturing jobs? What about the 1500 other higher paying R&D and sales jobs that Illumina now provides and the 1200 new jobs it will add according to Biomed? Illumina has in no way committed itself to maintaining those jobs in San Diego. And as it turns out, the 300 manufacturing jobs had magically diminished to 100 manufacturing jobs when the ink was put to paper.

Nothing about this deal is what it seems. The $1.5 million rebate. It's actually $1.5 million plus 3% which the city will pay out in one lump sum. That 3% really adds up year after year. The 10 year time period? It's really the lesser of 10 years or whenever Illumina can claim the rebate. Illumina moving to Poway or Memphis? It turns out neither Poway nor Memphis had ever heard of that. Illumina seeking a tax advantage not to move out of San Diego? Illumina CEO Flatley didn't approach the City. The Mayor's office in the person of Almis Udrys, Kevin Faulconer's Director of Government Affairs, approached him. The City Council's approval of the deal? The City Council's "approval" came after the deal had already been signed by Faulconer and Flatley. Did anyone on the City Council do their homework or due diligence to check this deal out? The first clue, Sherlock, was that Illumina had signed 15 year leases on all or some of its properties. Doesn't seem that they were going anywhere any time soon.

The Illumina deal sets a disastrous precedent for other corporations to seek out their own tax deals. It is just the harbinger of things to come. With the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation giving the "heads up", and Almis Udrys as liason, Mayor Faulconer is only too able and willing to do tax giveaways to San Diego corporations. Hey, we're open for business. C'mon down! The City Council's approval will just be an afterthought. Someone from the Mayor's office, like David Graham, will send the Council a Memorandum telling them to hurry up and ratify the Mayor's deals.

That's money that won't be used for parks, libraries, schools and infrastructure repairs like replacing 100 year old water mains and filling potholes. The Republicans' goal is to defund government and give the money to corporations. As their spokeman, Grover Norquist, has said, "We want to make government so small that it can be drowned in the bathtub." That's the Republican mantra. Corporate welfare of the type given to Illumina Corporation is a handy means for defunding government and transferring the money to the private sector.

Peter D. Enrich, a professor at Northeastern University School of Law has written:

The proliferation of state and local tax incentives designed to attract or retain business investment ... has proven troublingly resistant to reform. Despite a growing recognition ... that the competition over business incentives is at best a zero-sum game... the size of the incentive packages offered for large corporate facilities reaches ever-new heights ... The only consistent winners are the large businesses that can pit one jurisdiction against another for reduced tax burdens, while other taxpayers and citizens pay the cost in constrained government services and higher taxes ... The states and localities face a classic collective action problem: when they each pursue their individual self-interest, they all end up worse off.

CEO Jay Flatley was not going to move Illumina Corporation out of San Diego. He needs to stay close to the world class research universities in San Diego and the relationships developed therewith. His executives and highly paid employees don't want to trade San Diego's climate, the best in the nation, for Rich Perry's Texas hell hole. His kids want to continue surfing at the beaches. They all love their houses in La Jolla and Rancho Santa Fe. The wives want to continue shopping at University Towne Center. To uproot all these executives and highly paid employees would be unthinkable. Why then, does Mayor Faulconer think he has to offer tax rebate incentives to get major corporations to stay here? And to bum rush the City Council who obviously had not done their homework and due diligence on this issue. The best policy is to have faith and believe in San Diego as a place that major corporations would want to locate and, once located, would want to stay. The urge to offer tax incentives to corporations must be resisted. A Democratic Mayor would have resisted.

The Illumina rebate is just the beginning, the advent of a new era in San Diego politics, the signal that more is yet to come. The Mayor is sending a message to business. C'mon y'all, line up for your free tax giveaways. Mayor Kevin is open for business!

November 24, 2013

Having failed to defeat the Affordable Care Act in Congress, to beat it back in the last election, to repeal it despite more than eighty votes in the House, to stop it in the federal courts, to get enough votes in the Supreme Court to overrule it, and to gut it with outright extortion (closing the government and threatening to default on the nation’s debts unless it was repealed), Republicans are now down to their last ploy.

They are hell-bent on destroying the Affordable Care Act in Americans’ minds.

A document circulating among House Republicans (reported by the New York Times) instructs them to repeat the following themes and stories continuously: “Because of Obamacare, I Lost My Insurance.” “Obamacare Increases Health Care Costs.” “The Exchanges May Not Be Secure, Putting Personal Information at Risk.”

Every Republican in Washington has been programmed to use the word “disaster” whenever mentioning the Act, always refer to it as Obamacare, and demand its repeal.

Republican wordsmiths know they can count on Fox News and right-wing yell radio to amplify and intensify all of this in continuous loops of elaboration and outrage, repeated so often as to infect peoples’ minds like purulent pustules.

The idea is to make the Act so detestable it becomes the fearsome centerpiece of the midterm elections of 2014 — putting enough Democrats on the defensive they join in seeking its repeal or at least in amending it in ways that gut it (such as allowing insurers to sell whatever policies they want as long as they want, or delaying it further).

Admittedly, the President provided Republicans ammunition by botching the Act’s roll-out. Why wasn’t HealthCare.gov up and running smoothly October 1? Partly because the Administration didn’t anticipate that almost every Republican governor would refuse to set up a state exchange, thereby loading even more responsibility on an already over-worked and underfunded Department of Health and Human Services.

Why didn’t Obama’s advisors anticipate that some policies would be cancelled (after all, the Act sets higher standards than many policies offered) and therefore his “you can keep their old insurance” promise would become a target? Likely because they knew all policies were “grandfathered” for a year, didn’t anticipate how many insurers would cancel right away, and understood that only 5 percent of policyholders received insurance independent of an employer anyway.

But there’s really no good excuse. The White House should have anticipated the Republican attack machine.

The real problem is now. The President and other Democrats aren’t meeting the Republican barrage with three larger truths that show the pettiness of the attack:

The wreck of private insurance. Ours has been the only healthcare system in the world designed to avoid sick people. For-profit insurers have spent billions finding and marketing their policies to healthy people – young adults, people at low risk of expensive diseases, groups of professionals – while rejecting people with preexisting conditions, otherwise debilitated, or at high risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. And have routinely dropped coverage of policy holders who become seriously sick or disabled. What else would you expect from corporations seeking to maximize profits?

But the social consequences have been devastating. We have ended up with the most expensive healthcare system in the world (finding and marketing to healthy people is expensive, corporate executives are expensive, profits adequate to satisfy shareholders are expensive), combined with the worst health outcomes of all rich countries — highest rates of infant mortality, shortest life spans, largest portions of populations never seeing a doctor and receiving no preventive care, most expensive uses of emergency rooms.

We could not and cannot continue with this travesty of a healthcare system.

The Affordable Care Act is a modest solution. It still relies on private insurers — merely setting minimum standards and “exchanges” where customers can compare policies, requiring insurers to take people with preexisting conditions and not abandon those who get seriously sick, and helping low-income people afford coverage.

A single-payer system would have been preferable. Most other rich countries do it this way. It could have been grafted on to Social Security and Medicare, paid for through payroll taxes, expanded to lower-income families through Medicaid. It would have been simple and efficient. (It’s no coincidence that the Act’s Medicaid expansion has been easy and rapid in states that chose to accept it.)

But Republicans were dead set against this. They wouldn’t even abide a “public option” to buy into something resembling Medicare. In the end, they wouldn’t even go along with the Affordable Care Act, which was based on Republican ideas in the first place. (From Richard Nixon’s healthcare plan through the musings of the Heritage Foundation, Republicans for years urged that everything be kept in the hands of private insurers but the government set minimum standards, create state-based insurance exchanges, and require everyone to sign up).

The moral imperative. Even a clunky compromise like the ACA between a national system of health insurance and a for-profit insurance market depends, fundamentally, on a social compact in which those who are healthier and richer are willing to help those who are sicker and poorer. Such a social compact defines a society.

The other day I heard a young man say he’d rather pay a penalty than buy health insurance under the Act because, in his words, “why should I pay for the sick and the old?” The answer is he has a responsibility to do so, as a member the same society they inhabit.

The Act also depends on richer people paying higher taxes to finance health insurance for lower-income people. Starting this year, a healthcare surtax of 3.8 percent is applied to capital gains and dividend income of individuals earning more than $200,000 and a nine-tenths of 1 percent healthcare tax to wages over $200,000 or couples over $250,000. Together, the two taxes will raise an estimated $317.7 billion over 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Here again, the justification is plain: We are becoming a vastly unequal society in which most of the economic gains are going to the top. It’s only just that those with higher incomes bear some responsibility for maintaining the health of Americans who are less fortunate.

This is a profoundly moral argument about who we are and what we owe each other as Americans. But Democrats have failed to make it, perhaps because they’re reluctant to admit that the Act involves any redistribution at all.

Redistribution has become so unfashionable it’s easier to say everyone comes out ahead. And everyone does come out ahead in the long term: Even the best-off will gain from a healthier and more productive workforce, and will save money from preventive care that reduces the number of destitute people using emergency rooms when they become seriously ill.

But there would be no reason to reform and extend health insurance to begin with if we did not have moral obligations to one another as members of the same society.

The initial problems with the website and the President’s ill-advised remark about everyone being able to keep their old policies are real. But they’re trifling compared to the wreckage of the current system, the modest but important step toward reform embodied in the Act, and the moral imperative at the core of the Act and of our society.

The Republicans have created a tempest out of trivialities. It is incumbent on Democrats — from the President on down — to show Americans the larger picture, and do so again and again.

They say the biggest problem is the size of government and the budget deficit.

In fact our biggest problem is the decline of the middle class and increasing ranks of the poor, while almost all the economic gains go to the top.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that only 148,000 jobs were created in September — way down from the average of 207,000 new jobs a month in the first quarter of the year.

Many Americans have stopped looking for work. The official unemployment rate of 7.2 percent reflects only those who are still looking. If the same percentage of Americans were in the workforce today as when Barack Obama took office, today’s unemployment rate would be 10.8 percent.

Meanwhile, 95 percent of the economic gains since the recovery began in 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent. The real median household income continues to drop, and the number of Americans in poverty continues to rise.

So what’s Washington doing about this? Nothing. Instead, it’s back to debating how to cut the federal budget deficit.

The deficit shouldn’t even be an issue because it’s now almost down to the same share of the economy as it’s averaged over the last thirty years.

The triumph of right-wing Republicanism extends further. Failure to reach a budget agreement will restart the so-called “sequester” — automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that were passed in 2011 as a result of Congress’s last failure to agree on a budget.

These automatic cuts get tighter and tighter, year by year — squeezing almost everything the federal government does except for Social Security and Medicare. While about half the cuts come out of the defense budget, much of the rest come out of programs designed to help Americans in need: extended unemployment benefits; supplemental nutrition for women, infants and children; educational funding for schools in poor communities; Head Start; special education for students with learning disabilities; child-care subsidies for working families; heating assistance for poor families. The list goes on.

The biggest debate in Washington over the next few months will be whether to whack the federal budget deficit by cutting future entitlement spending and closing some tax loopholes, or go back to the sequester. Some choice.

The real triumph of the right has come in shaping the national conversation around the size of government and the budget deficit – thereby diverting attention from what’s really going on: the increasing concentration of the nation’s income and wealth at the very top, while most Americans fall further and further behind.

Continuing cuts in the budget deficit – through the sequester or a deficit agreement — will only worsen this by reducing total demand for goods and services and by eliminating programs that hard-pressed Americans depend on.

The President and Democrats should re-frame the national conversation around widening inequality. They could start by demanding an increase in the minimum wage and a larger Earned Income Tax Credit. (The President doesn’t’ even have to wait for Congress to act. He can raise the minimum wage for government contractors through an executive order.)

Framing the central issue around jobs and inequality would make clear why it’s necessary to raise taxes on the wealthy and close tax loopholes (such as “carried interest,” which enables hedge-fund and private-equity managers to treat their taxable income as capital gains).

It would explain why we need to invest more in education – including early-childhood as well as affordable higher education.

This framework would even make the Affordable Care Act more understandable – as a means for helping working families whose jobs are paying less or disappearing altogether, and therefore in constant danger of losing health insurance.

The central issue of our time is the reality of widening inequality of income and wealth. Everything else — the government shutdown, the fight over the debt ceiling, the continuing negotiations over the budget deficit — is a dangerous distraction. The Right’s success in generating this distraction is its greatest, and most insidious, triumph.

October 19, 2013

Republicans have agreed to fund the federal government through January 15 and extend the government’s ability to borrow (raise the debt ceiling) through Feb. 7. The two sides have committed themselves to negotiate a long-term budget plan by mid-December.

Regardless of what happens in the upcoming budget negotiations, it seems doubtful House Republicans will try to prevent the debt ceiling from being raised next February. Saner heads in the GOP will be able to point to the debacle Tea Partiers created this time around – the public’s anger, directed mostly at Republicans; upset among business leaders and Wall Street executives, who bankroll much of the GOP; and the sharply negative reaction of stock and bond markets, where the American middle class parks whatever savings it has.

The saner Republicans will also be able to point out that President Obama means it when he says he won’t ever negotiate over the debt ceiling. The fact that he negotiated over it in 2011 is now irrelevant.

On the other hand, there’s a significant chance of another government shutdown in January. By then we’ll be well into the gravitational pull of the 2014 midterm elections. Every House member is up for reelection – mostly from safe (often gerrymandered) districts in which their major competitors are likely to be primary opponents from the Tea Party right.

These opponents will be challenging them to show what they’ve done to sandbag Obamacare and shrink the size of government. The President and the Democrats have made it clear they’ll protect Obamacare at all costs. Which means the real action between now and January 15 will be over the federal budget. The threat of another government shutdown is the only major bargaining leverage House Republicans possess in order to get what they consider “meaningful” concessions.

We know the parameters of the upcoming budget debate because we’ve been there before. The House already has its version — the budget Paul Ryan bequeathed to them. This includes major cuts in Medicare (turning it into a voucher) and Social Security (privatizing much of it), and substantial cuts in domestic programs ranging from education and infrastructure to help for poorer Americans. Republicans also have some bargaining leverage in the sequester, which continues to indiscriminately choke government spending.

The Senate has its own version of a budget, which, by contrast, cuts corporate welfare, reduces defense spending, and raises revenues by closing tax loopholes for the wealthy.

Here, I fear, is where the President is likely to cave.

He’s already put on the table a way to reduce future Social Security payments by altering the way cost-of-living adjustments are made – using the so-called “chained” consumer price index, which assumes that when prices rise people economize by switching to cheaper alternatives. This makes no sense for seniors, who already spend a disproportionate share of their income on prescription drugs, home healthcare, and medical devices – the prices of which have been rising faster than inflation. Besides, Social Security isn’t responsible for our budget deficits. Quite the opposite: For years its surpluses have been used to fund everything else the government does.

The President has also suggested “means-testing” Medicare – that is, providing less of it to higher-income seniors. This might be sensible. The danger is it becomes the start of a slippery slope that eventually turns Medicare into another type of Medicaid, a program perceived to be for the poor and therefore vulnerable to budget cuts.

But why even suggest cutting Medicare at all, when the program isn’t responsible for the large budget deficits projected a decade or more from now? Medicare itself is enormously efficient; its administrative costs are far lower than commercial health insurance.

The real problem is the rising costs of healthcare, coupled with the aging of the post-war boomers. The best way to deal with the former – short of a single-payer system — is to use Medicare’s bargaining power over providers to move them from “fee-for-services,” in which providers have every incentive to do more tests and procedures, to “payments-for-healthy-outcomes,” where providers would have every incentive to keep people healthy. (The best way to deal with the latter – the aging of the American population – is to allow more young immigrants into America.)

More generally, the President has been too eager to accept the argument that the major economic problem facing the nation is large budget deficits – when, in point of fact, the deficit has been shrinking as a share of the national economy. The only reason it’s expected to increase in future years is, again, rising healthcare costs.

Our real economic problem continues to be a dearth of good jobs along with widening inequality. Cutting the budget deficit may make both worse, by reducing total demand for goods and services and eliminating programs that lower-income Americans depend on.

The President has now scored a significant victory over extremist Republicans. But the fight will continue. He mustn’t relinquish ground during the upcoming cease-fire.

October 13, 2013

Now is the time to lance the boil of Republican extremism once and for all.

Since Barack Obama became president, the extremists who have taken over the Republican Party have escalated their demands every time he’s caved, using the entire government of the United States as their bargaining chit.

In 2010 he agreed to extend all of the Bush tax cuts through the end of 2012. Were they satisfied? Of course not.

In the summer of 2011, goaded by an influx of Tea Partiers, they demanded huge spending cuts in return for raising the debt ceiling. In response, the President offered an overly-generous $4 trillion “Grand Bargain,” including cuts in Social Security and Medicare and whopping cuts in domestic spending (bringing it to its lowest level as a share of gross domestic product in over half a century).

Were Republicans content? No. When they demanded more, Obama agreed to a Super Committee to find bigger cuts, and if the Super Committee failed, a “sequester” that would automatically and indiscriminately slice everything in the federal budget except Social Security and Medicare.

Not even Obama’s re-election put a damper on their increasing demands. By the end of 2012, they insisted that the Bush tax cuts be permanently extended or the nation would go over the “fiscal cliff.” Once again, Obama caved, agreeing to permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for incomes up to $400,000.

Early this year, after the sequester went into effect, Republicans demanded even bigger spending cuts. Obama offered more cuts in Medicare and a “chained CPI” to reduce Social Security payments, in exchange for Republican concessions on taxes.

Refusing the offer, and seemingly delirious with their power to hold the nation hostage, they demanded that the Affordable Care Act be repealed as a condition for funding the government and again raising the debt ceiling.

This time, though, Obama didn’t cave — at least, not yet.

The government is shuttered and the nation is on the verge of defaulting on its debts. But public opinion has turned sharply against the Republican Party. And the GOP’s corporate and Wall Street backers are threatening to de-fund it.

Suddenly the Republicans are acting like the school-yard bully who terrorized the playground but finally got punched in the face. They’re in shock. They’re humiliated. They’re trying to come up with ways of saving face.

With bloodied nose, House Republicans are running home. They’ve abruptly turned negotiations over to their Senate colleagues.

And just as suddenly, their demand to repeal or delay the Affordable Care Act has vanished. (An email from the group Tea Party Express says: “Are you like us wondering where the fight against Obamacare went?”) At a lunch meeting in the Capitol, Senator John McCain asked a roomful of Republican senators if they still believed it was possible to reverse parts of the program. According to someone briefed on the meeting, no one raised a hand — not even Ted Cruz.

It appears that negotiations over the federal budget deficit are about to begin once again, and presumably Senate Republicans will insist that Obama and the Democrats give way on taxes and spending in exchange for reopening the government and raising the debt ceiling for at least another year.

But keeping the government running and paying the nation’s bills should never have been bargaining chits in the first place, and the President and Democrats shouldn’t begin to negotiate over future budgets until they’re taken off the table.

The question is how thoroughly President Obama has learned that extortionist demands escalate if you give in to them.

October 08, 2013

"I would dispel the rumor that is going around that you hear on every newscast, that if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we will default on our debt," says Sen.Tom Coburn, R-Okla. “We won’t. We’ll continue to pay our interest.”

This is crazy talk. While the Treasury Department could prioritize interest payments after October 17 – the day the Treasury Department says it no longer has legal authority to pay the nation’s debts – and not pay Social Security and Medicare, this would buy a few days at most.

Meanwhile, interest rates will soar, stock prices will plummet, the global economy will begin spiraling downward, and millions of Americans wouldn’t receive their Social Security and Medicare.

So why are Republicans talking like this? Because they want to sound as if they’re willing to blow up the economy if they don’t get their way. A crazy person with a bomb is much scarier than someone holding a bomb who looks and acts reasonable. Sounding crazy is part of the Republican bargaining strategy.

But the President and the Democrats must not give in.

If we get to October 17th and the Republicans are still holding the nation hostage, the President has only one option: He must ignore the debt ceiling and order the Treasury to continue to pay all the nation’s bills.

He should rely on Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which says the “validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned.” The debt itself is clearly “authorized by law” because it’s the direct result of laws authorizing the U.S. to spend and to tax. The showdown over the debt ceiling is over payment of the debt, not the legality of the debt itself. Arguably, what the Constitution requires trumps any law governing the debt-ceiling.

If Republicans disagree, let them try to impeach the President. Their polls are already dropping. The latest Washington Post-ABC poll shows 70 percent of the public disapproving of their tactics (65 percent disapproved before the shutdown), while the President’s disapproval remains at 51 percent. An attempted impeachment would reveal to the public just how crazy Republicans have become.

October 07, 2013

"You are here because now is the single best time we have to defund Obamacare. This is a fight we can win." SENATOR TED CRUZ, speaking in August to a Heritage Action gathering in Dallas

WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.

Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.

It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.

“We felt very strongly at the start of this year that the House needed to use the power of the purse,” said one coalition member, Michael A. Needham, who runs Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation. “At least at Heritage Action, we felt very strongly from the start that this was a fight that we were going to pick.”

Last week the country witnessed the fallout from that strategy: a standoff that has shuttered much of the federal bureaucracy and unsettled the nation.

To many Americans, the shutdown came out of nowhere. But interviews with a wide array of conservatives show that the confrontation that precipitated the crisis was the outgrowth of a long-running effort to undo the law, the Affordable Care Act, since its passage in 2010 — waged by a galaxy of conservative groups with more money, organized tactics and interconnections than is commonly known.

With polls showing Americans deeply divided over the law, conservatives believe that the public is behind them. Although the law’s opponents say that shutting down the government was not their objective, the activists anticipated that a shutdown could occur — and worked with members of the Tea Party caucus in Congress who were excited about drawing a red line against a law they despise.

A defunding “tool kit” created in early September included talking points for the question, “What happens when you shut down the government and you are blamed for it?” The suggested answer was the one House Republicans give today: “We are simply calling to fund the entire government except for the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare.”

The current budget brinkmanship is just the latest development in a well-financed, broad-based assault on the health law, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative initiative. Groups like Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are all immersed in the fight, as is Club for Growth, a business-backed nonprofit organization. Some, like Generation Opportunity and Young Americans for Liberty, both aimed at young adults, are upstarts. Heritage Action is new, too, founded in 2010 to advance the policy prescriptions of its sister group, the Heritage Foundation.

The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have been deeply involved with financing the overall effort. A group linked to the Kochs, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, disbursed more than $200 million last year to nonprofit organizations involved in the fight. Included was $5 million to Generation Opportunity, which created a buzz last month with an Internet advertisement showing a menacing Uncle Sam figure popping up between a woman’s legs during a gynecological exam.

The groups have also sought to pressure vulnerable Republican members of Congress with scorecards keeping track of their health care votes; have burned faux “Obamacare cards” on college campuses; and have distributed scripts for phone calls to Congressional offices, sample letters to editors and Twitter and Facebook offerings for followers to present as their own.

One sample Twitter offering — “Obamacare is a train wreck” — is a common refrain for Speaker John A. Boehner.

As the defunding movement picked up steam among outside advocates, Republicans who sounded tepid became targets. The Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee dedicated to “electing true conservatives,” ran radio advertisements against three Republican incumbents.

Heritage Action ran critical Internet advertisements in the districts of 100 Republican lawmakers who had failed to sign a letter by a North Carolina freshman, Representative Mark Meadows, urging Mr. Boehner to take up the defunding cause.

“They’ve been hugely influential,” said David Wasserman, who tracks House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “When else in our history has a freshman member of Congress from North Carolina been able to round up a gang of 80 that’s essentially ground the government to a halt?”

On Capitol Hill, the advocates found willing partners in Tea Party conservatives, who have repeatedly threatened to shut down the government if they do not get their way on spending issues. This time they said they were so alarmed by the health law that they were willing to risk a shutdown over it. (“This is exactly what the public wants,” Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, said on the eve of the shutdown.)

Despite Mrs. Bachmann’s comments, not all of the groups have been on board with the defunding campaign. Some, like the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity, which spent $5.5 million on health care television advertisements over the past three months, are more focused on sowing public doubts about the law. But all have a common goal, which is to cripple a measure that Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican and leader of the defunding effort, has likened to a horror movie.

“We view this as a long-term effort,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity. He said his group expected to spend “tens of millions” of dollars on a “multifront effort” that includes working to prevent states from expanding Medicaid under the law. The group’s goal is not to defund the law.

October 01, 2013

As a child I was bullied by bigger boys who threatened to beat me up if I didn’t give them what they wanted. But every time I gave in to their demands their subsequent demands grew larger. First they wanted the change in my pocket. Next it was the dessert in my lunchbox. Then my new Davy Crockett cap. Then the softball and bat I got for my birthday.

Finally I stopped giving in. When the bullies began roughing me up on the playground some older boys came to my rescue and threatened my tormenters with black eyes if they ever touched me again. That ended their extortion racket.

What’s happening in Washington these days may seem far removed from my boyhood memories, but Washington is really just another children’s playground. Its current bullies are right-wing Republicans, now threatening that if they don’t get their way they’ll close down the government and cause the nation to default on its debts.

“The American people don’t want a government shutdown, and they don’t want Obamacare,” House Republican leaders said in a statement over the weekend. “We will do our job and send this bill over, and then it’s up to the Senate to pass it and stop a government showdown.”

Really? The American people don’t want Obamacare as much as I didn’t want my softball and bat.

Okay, maybe not quite as much. But the only settled way we know what the American people want is through the democratic process. And the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is the law of the land. A majority of the House and Senate voted for it, the President signed it into law, its constitutionality has been upheld by the Supreme Court, and a majority of Americans reelected the President after an election battle in which the Affordable Care Act was a central issue.

Moreover, we don’t repeal laws in this country by holding hostage the entire government of the United States.

The bullies are a faction inside the Republican Party – extremists who are threatening more reasonable Republicans with primary challenges if they don’t go along.

And where are the Tea Party extremists getting their dough? From even bigger bullies – a handful of hugely wealthy Americans who are sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into this extortion racket.

They include David and Charles Koch (and their front group, “Americans for Prosperity’); Peter Thiel, leverage-buyout specialist John Childs, investor Howie Rich, Stephen Jackson of the Stevens Group, and executives of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, (all behind the “Club for Growth”); and Crow Holdings’ Harlan Crow, shipping magnate Richard Uihlein, and investment banker Foster Friess; executives of MetLife and Philip Morris, and foundations controlled by the Scaife family (all bankrolling “FreedomWorks.”)

Their game plan is to not just to take over the Republican Party. It’s to take over America. The showdown over the budget and the debt ceiling is a prelude to 2016, when they plan to run Texas Senator Ted Cruz for President. (Cruz, if you haven’t noticed, is busily establishing his creds as the biggest flamer in Washington – orchestrating not only the current extortion but also the purge of reasonable Republicans from the GOP.)

Obama and the Democrats must not give in. They shouldn’t even negotiate with extortionists. As I learned the hard way, giving in to bullies just encourages them to escalate their demands.

The President began negotiations with the Republican bullies in 2011 when they first threatened to default on the nation’s debt if they didn’t get the spending cuts they wanted. He negotiated again at the end of 2012 when they threatened to go over the fiscal cliff and take the rest of the nation with them if they didn’t get the budget they wanted. Now they want to repeal a law they detest. If we give in again, what’s next? A coup d’etat?

August 04, 2013

Job-growth is sputtering. So why, exactly, do regressive Republicans continue to say “no" to every idea for boosting it — even last week’s almost absurdly modest proposal by President Obama to combine corporate tax cuts with increased spending on roads and other public works?

It can’t be because Republicans don’t know what’s happening. The data are indisputable. July’s job growth of 162,000 jobs was the weakest in four months. The average workweek was the shortest in six months. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has also lowered its estimates of hiring during May and June.

It can’t be Republicans really believe further spending cuts will help. They’ve seen the effects of austerity economics on Europe. They know the study they relied on by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff has been debunked. They’re no longer even trying to make the case for austerity.

It could be they just want to continue opposing anything Obama proposes, but that’s beginning to seem like a stretch. Republican leaders and aspiring 2016 presidential candidates are warning against being the “party of ‘no.’" Public support for the GOP continues to plummet.

The real answer, I think, is they and their patrons want unemployment to remain high and job-growth to sputter. Why? Three reasons:

First, high unemployment keeps wages down. Workers who are worried about losing their jobs settle for whatever they can get — which is why hourly earnings keep dropping. The median wage is now 4 percent lower than it was at the start of the recovery. Low wages help boost corporate profits, thereby keeping the regressives’ corporate sponsors happy.

Third, high unemployment keeps most Americans economically fearful and financially insecure. This sets them up to believe regressive lies — that their biggest worry should be that “big government" will tax away the little they have and give it to “undeserving" minorities; that they should support low taxes on corporations and wealthy “job creators;" and that new immigrants threaten their jobs.

It’s important for Obama and the Democrats to recognize this cynical strategy for what it is, and help the rest of America to see it.

And to counter with three basic truths:

First, the real job creators are consumers, and if average people don’t have jobs or good wages this economy can’t have a vigorous recovery.

Second, the rich would do better with a smaller share of a rapidly-growing economy than their current big share of an economy that’s hardly moving.

Third, therefore everyone would benefit from higher taxes on the wealthy to finance public investments in roads, bridges, public transit, better schools, affordable higher education, and healthcare — all of which will help the middle class and the poor, and generate more and better jobs.